SUTTON -- A new community health center is rising in Sutton to provide care for this medically underserved part of the Valley where people still sometimes drive hours to see a doctor.
Currently, 280 patients seek health care in a makeshift community health center on the bottom floor of a Chickaloon Village Traditional Council building. The clinic, operated in partnership between the council and Southcentral Foundation, is called the C'eyiits' Hwnax Life House Community Health Center.
But a new $4.9 million health and wellness center more than four times the little clinic's size broke ground this week at Mile 61 of the Glenn Highway.
Scheduled for completion in December, the modern two-story building will rise from the highway amid Sutton's scattered homes, a bar, a store, and a handful of small businesses separated by 20 minutes of winding highway from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough's busy core around Palmer and Wasilla.
Gathering place
The 8,100-square-foot center will provide primary care medical services on a sliding fee scale to Alaska Native peoples but will also serve non-native customers -- an estimated 1,400 potential patients from Palmer to Eureka, according to Lisa Wade, a Chickaloon Village Traditional Council member who serves as director of health, education and social services.
There will be two exam rooms and talking rooms, but also services never before available in this corner of the Mat-Su: X-ray services; a telepharmacy; a room for minor procedures; and a wellness center with a gym and locker rooms with showers. The building is designed to maximize energy efficiency with solar panels, a well-insulated building "envelope," and a heat-recovery ventilator that captures heat from exhaust to heat incoming fresh air, according to Southcentral Foundation.
The new building is called Ahtnahwt'aene' Nay'dini'aa den ("Ahtna People, Chickaloon Place" in the Ahtna Athabascan language) Gathering Place.
It marks the culmination of more than 15 years spent trying to bring a higher level of medicine to a broad rural area served by this once-bustling coal town at the heart of an historic Ahtna Athabascan trading hub.
Building trust
Small-town medicine still prevails at the existing health clinic that occupies a warren of rooms downstairs in a small two-story brown building along the Glenn Highway.
Yale School of Medicine-educated physician assistant Ben Olmedo, a decorated U.S. Army veteran, brings a combination of warmth and no-nonsense to his role as the clinic's primary care provider.
Olmedo made his rounds Thursday over salmon chowder, coleslaw and pilot bread at a weekly elder's lunch on the upstairs floor of the clinic. The lunch is a good place to touch base with patients about blood pressure or diet.
"Did you get a haircut?" he asked Pat Younack. Olmedo walked around pouring coffee and visiting.
He and nurse case manager Vicki Kindseth see patients more formally in the clinic's one small, neat exam room crammed with equipment. Receptionists sit elbow-to-elbow at the front desk.
Olmedo makes home visits for mobility-challenged elders. He worked to get other services for the area, including exams for preschoolers and an immunization clinic.
When he started work in 2012, Olmedo said he saw four to six patients a week. Now he's close to seven to 10 a day, five days a week.
He's also built a new level of trust in the community, patients say.
Younack, who is Koyukon Athabascan on her mother's side and Tlingit on her father's, lives up Jonesville Mine Road. She'd rather get treatment locally than in Anchorage or Wasilla.
"I think the doctor has a more personal relationship with a smaller community," she said. "He remembers who you are."
Community building
The new health and wellness center is being built through a partnership of Southcentral Foundation and Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, the governing body for Chickaloon Native Village. Other funding sources include Rasmuson Foundation, Mat-Su Health Foundation and special municipal bonds issued by the City of Wasilla.
The new center will need to add staff including a half-time provider in addition to Olmedo and possibly dental and behavioral health specialists, Olmedo and Wade said. It will also house the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council Health and Social Services Department, now based in a cluster of outbuildings at the Ya Ne Dah Ah School about five miles away near Moose Creek.
It's taken time and patience to get locals accustomed to the idea of health care so close to home, Wade said.
A small Chickaloon tribal clinic operated for some time before a federal grant led to the opening of the current sliding-scale community health center in February 2014.
Many residents still travel to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center or to the closest community health center in Wasilla or even past Willow at Sunshine for care, Wade said. The clinic still battles a misconception that only Chickaloon tribal citizens or Alaska Native peoples can get care there, she said. Actually, only about a quarter of patients are covered by Indian Health Services benefits.
Wade said he thinks the new health and wellness center will start drawing more locals, given the already growing patient population at the current facility. The showers and laundry available there will also be a boon for residents without running water. There will be gardens and a gathering space outside.
The completion of the Chickaloon clinic comes about 10 years after a borough master plan called for more community health facilities, Wade said. Soon, Sutton will join Wasilla and Sunshine.
"This is kind of like finishing the triangle," she said.