This clinic is really something to be proud about!
Local leaders snipped a rainbow-colored ribbon to celebrate the Wednesday opening of North Brooklyn’s first medical facility dedicated to treating the LGBTQ community. The opening of Pride Health Center at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Woodhull Hospital is an inclusive step towards making sure no patients fall through the cracks in getting the treatment they need, according to the nabe’s councilman.
“In a region as vibrant and diverse as Brooklyn, public institutions must ensure they are able to address a wide range of culturally-specific needs,” said Councilman Robert Cornegy (D–Bedford-Stuyvesant). “The addition of a dedicated LGBTQ health center further demonstrates the hospital’s continued commitment to being at the forefront of addressing this area’s health-care needs in a comprehensive way.”
Doctors at the center inside the public hospital at 760 Broadway are specially trained in providing care for LGBTQ patients, including primary care, obstetrics and gynecology, hormone therapy, behavioral health, sexually-transmitted-infection testing and treatment, and HIV-testing and prevention.
Clients can currently visit the gay-friendly clinic on Mondays from 4 to 8 pm, but hospital honchos expect to expand its operating hours as patient volume grows. And the larger medical center’s doctors are on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
The Pride Health Center is the second LGBTQ-focused clinic in the city’s public-hospital system — the first opened in Manhattan in 2014 — and it is certainly not the last to arrive in the Borough of Kings.
Workers are expected to break ground early next year on another facility that serves the local gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer community, the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, and its honchos expect the Downtown clinic on Flatbush Avenue Extension to open in mid-2019.
And LGBTQ patients could already seek treatment at a specialized health center inside East Flatbush’s State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, which opened in 2015.
There may only be a handful in the borough, but the Pride Health Center’s opening represents Brooklyn’s important commitment to providing health services for members of its marginalized communities, according to another pol who joined First Lady Chirlane McCray at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“As we move forward into the 21st century, it is imperative that we strive to build an inclusive society that respects and embraces individuals of all walks of life,” said Assemblywoman Maritza Davila (D–Bushwick),
