Who We Are - And Where We're Going!

---

In 2009 the people of Union, Cove and North Powder raised money, got grants and worked together to build a beautiful new building for the Union Clinic. Later they added a dental clinic. It was the kind of clinic where you could be seen if you were sick, or cut yourself trying to fix the fence, or just needed to follow up with your provider. In order to manage the clinic and give it the benefit of having community funding and support, the people of Union, Cove and North Powder voted to create the South County Health District and elected the first 5-member board of directors. Unfortunately, times change and our little clinic became another casualty of the growing shortage of medical providers available to rural communities. In 2015 Grande Ronde Hospital agreed to assume the medical practice and provide doctors and nurse practitioners we needed. South County Health District kept the Union Family Dental Clinic and remained in the clinic building along with Grande Ronde’s new Union Clinic. 

The Dental clinic is a great resource for our community. It provides basic care at affordable prices and gives district voters discounts on their dental care – but few people even know it exists. In 2020 a couple of amazing things happened. The board hired a new clinic manager, Adina Ferguson, who turned out to be extremely good at managing finances and the board hired a new Dentist – Dr. Mary Harrell – who had decades of experience with community dental clinics. Dr. Harrell taught our new manager how to run a community dental practice, how to get set up with the needed insurance contracts and a lot of other valuable skills. In a short time the district went from getting by to getting ahead.

 The board took a look around and realized that they had the resources to look beyond managing a dental clinic and find other ways they could help the people in our district.   The board is now working on a strategic plan to keep the clinic and any new projects funded into the future. The plan will include staffing for the clinic and the district so we will always have the manpower we need to serve our community.  

The board has applied for grants so we can offer Teledentistry and Portable Dentistry to our patients. This will allow our dentist to screen patients and offer services virtually – by Zoom. This grant will also allow the dental clinic to purchase a mobile setup so we can do dental screenings away from the clinic and hopefully someday soon, do simple dental procedures in your home or other location. This telecommunications setup can allow us to do virtual consults, train our staff, provide virtual health seminars and meetings for the public and expand the medical services we now have in Union, Cove and North Powder by bringing them to us virtually from anywhere. We can train residents on the use of this technology and help them find doctors who provide telemedicine appointments for diabetes followup, urgent care issues, diet and nutrition consults, mental health counseling – and even some physical therapy sessions! We are expanding this technology to provide virtual exercise classes to the community, health and wellness training, education and seminars. We can build a library of health topic videos and materials that anyone can access on our website. We have partnered with some of the amazing organizations in our area who can help people find local doctors and programs to help them with their healthcare needs. We plan to sponsor training on how to find the right health insurance, vaccine clinics, a health fair and everything else we might find to help our district patrons. There is so much we can do!