![]() They could also be used by public health reformers to push the city government and local organizations into action. Such reports demonstrated the need for the dispensary and the impact it had in the community. The dispensary released monthly and annual statistical reports like this one from May 1922 that provided figures for the number of patients each clinic saw as well as the number of services provided. Well-baby clinic at the Neighborhood House, which was affiliated with the People's Institute and Portland Free Dispensary, 1920s (Historical Image Collection) The dispensary was also affiliated with local hospitals and transferred patients to Multnomah County Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, and St. The Visiting Nurse Association provided nursing services as well as nursing schools in Portland. Some clinics were organized in cooperation with other organizations, such as a venereal clinic and two prenatal clinics, operated in association with the Oregon State Board of Health. The Portland Free Dispensary eventually established forty-one separate clinics, including the first well-baby clinics in Oregon. Staffed by volunteer physicians, in 1909 the dispensary became affiliated with the University of Oregon Medical School and medical students made rotations through its clinics. Three years later, upon realizing that what the city’s poor most needed was health care, the group founded the Portland Free Dispensary. Modeled on Hull House, the institute sought to provide social services to Portland’s low-income residents. In 1904, Valentine Prichard, supervisor of the Portland Public School kindergartens, partnered with prominent local women, such as Helen Ladd Corbett and Caroline Ladd, to organize the People’s Institute Settlement Work.
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