History

T.H.E. Clinic began life on February 5, 1974 as T.H.E. Clinic for Women, a new health care facility that would provide low-cost high-quality health care for the mainly minority women of South Central Los Angeles, who were usually low-income, uninsured single mothers desperately in need of such services for their children, their other relatives, and themselves.

The founders were eight medical volunteers: Vi Verreux (the first director), Joan Alpert, Barbara Saunders, Susan Schlager, Debbi Kates, Fredda Draluck, Marilyn Stone, and Marilyn Norwood (T.H.E.’s Nursing Director and the last of the group still on the staff).

Other volunteers also came aboard; one of them, Robin Orr, is still a staff member. Irene Hirano signed on as T.H.E. Clinic’s first executive director in May 1975; after she left in 1988, Sylvia Drew Ivie succeeded her. William Merritt, M.D. also joined the clinic as its first medical director.

Working at first for limited daily hours and no pay, the clinic faced an uphill struggle to keep T.H.E. Clinic alive while it gradually got the word out to the women in its service area, who soon began to fill its waiting rooms and keeping its medical practitioners busy. Since then, T.H.E. Clinic has garnered longtime support from all levels of government as well as such major public policy institutions as the California Foundation, United Way, Drew University, and the California Family Health Council, to name only a few.

T.H.E. Clinic has always paid special attention to the full range of services connected with pregnancy, contraception, and family planning. Throughout its years of operation, T.H.E. Clinic has adhered to a simply stated ideal: "Health care is a right, not a privilege."

T.H.E. Clinic remains in the forefront of crafting treatment and educational regimens to address such widely-discussed health care and social problems as cancer in all its manifestations (especially breast, cervical, and prostate cancer), obesity (including obesity among children and teenagers), and the immunization of children against a wide range of diseases, along with its traditional attention to prenatal and postnatal care for mothers as well as pediatric care for their babies and older children.

The multi-ethnic, multi-racial character of not only T.H.E. Clinic’s patients but its staff as well is another element that makes it unique. T.H.E. Clinic is a rare and invaluable social institution, especially for a hotbed of national and international diversity like Los Angeles, because both its patients and its staff cover the racial-social-ethnic-age-linguistic spectrum.

For example, at various times during its history the languages spoken by staff members have included English, Spanish, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Tagalog, Illongo, Korean, French, Amharic, Tongan, and Russian. Some clinic staff members speak as many as four languages. Such skills have proven to be indispensable because so many of T.H.E. Clinic’s patients are recent immigrants who speak only their native tongues. This aspect of the clinic’s culture also reflects the way that T.H.E. Clinic has long been known as a medical facility where anyone can feel at home regardless of background.

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