Jaqueline Armijo walked into the emergency room at St. Anthony North Hospital last year feeling sick and sluggish.
She walked out facing the prospect of first-time motherhood, and thousands of dollars of medical care.
The 23-year-old Denver native was out of work then, and without health insurance. Her boyfriend had a warehouse job, but he couldn’t afford the employee insurance for himself, much less Armijo and their baby. Her mother recently had been laid off.
Today, this family is grateful a place exists like the Inner City Health Center, a private, nonprofit, volunteer-based clinic that provides medical and dental care to the poor and uninsured. “I’ve been using the clinic since the day I found out I was pregnant,” Armijo says.
Her daughter, Alize, is now 4 months old. Inner City charges moms like Armijo about $600 to deliver their babies at partner facilities like St. Anthony or Children’s Hospital. Delivery would cost them upward of $6,000 without Inner City’s help.
“A lot of people don’t go to the doctor because they can’t afford it, and then they get sick,” Armijo says. “At least (people) know they can go there.”
She grew up near the triangular city block — on the border between Denver’s Five Points and Whittier neighborhoods — where Inner City’s two-story peach and salmon building has become a regional health care beacon. The center has applied for funding from this year’s Post-News Season to Share campaign.
About 770,000 people in Colorado are uninsured, says Paul Dunne, Inner City’s executive director of development.
Inner City has no geographic patient requirement, so in reality, people from around the Rocky Mountain region seek out the clinic. Approximately 59 percent of them are uninsured, and 34 percent are on Medicare or Medicaid.
These people walk through the doors and are greeted by this biblical passage on the wall: “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health.”
Christian fellowship and the desire to provide a respectful health care environment for the medically indigent inspired the physicians who founded Inner City more than two decades ago. Treating patients with respect continues to be a top staff focus.
Many of Inner City’s patients are everyday people for whom rent, food and child-care expenses take priority over health insurance or regular medical care. One of them is the popular Denver-area entertainer Hazel Miller. She uses Inner City to help manage her diabetes.
“I’m a patient here because I have to be,” the enigmatic singer says in a video interview about the clinic. “Inner City is a lifeline — not just for me.”
Another population likely to fall into Inner City’s safety net? Veterans. Just recently, the Department of Veterans Affairs released a study indicating one in eight veterans under 65 is without health insurance, and those ranks are swelling.
Elana Ashanti Jefferson: 303-954-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com
Inner City Health Center
Address: 3405 Downing St., Denver
In operation since: 1983
Number served last year: About 20,000
Staff: 40
Yearly budget: $2.97 million
Percentage of funds going directly to clients: 100 percent
