Stimulus money boosts health clinics serving poor

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Homeless teenagers at a central Colorado shelter are feeling the effect of the government’s economic stimulus package. It’s the feeling of a dentist’s drill.

The 20 runaway youths living at the Urban Peak shelter had no regular dental care until this spring, when a $1.3 million stimulus grant to a community health center paid for a mobile dental and medical clinic to visit once a month. The residents now get medical and dental screenings, and cavities filled, right from their shelter’s parking lot.

“I knew my teeth needed to be fixed but I had no money,” says Michelle Daulton, 18, who has been living at the shelter for about four months and hadn’t seen a dentist since she was 13.

Now she’s had three chipped teeth repaired. “It was absolute and pure relief, I mean that,” she said.

From the Colorado homeless shelter to rural Pennsylvania clinics that can accept new patients, health centers that serve the poor are among the first places the federal stimulus package is being spent. More Here EMR Stimulus Package