The Community Hospital of Seventh-day Adventists, a health-care institution in Trinidad, recently inaugurated an urgent care medical clinic close to the campus of the Adventist Church–run University of the Southern Caribbean (USC) in St. Joseph, Port of Spain, Trinidad.

The new clinic is a partnership between the two institutions and is providing high-quality medical services to the university community and the residents of Maracas Valley.

University and community members witnessed the opening of the USC medical clinic and took part in a health fair. Everyone in attendance was able to take advantage of a wide range of free health-care services and resources focused on the importance of proactive health management on September 17.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Member of Parliament for Tunapuna Esmond Forde commended the longstanding legacy of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s engagement with community health. Forde celebrated the collaborative efforts of USC and The Community Hospital, recognizing the clinic as a bold step that complements the government’s health-care services.

Since the establishment of The Community Hospital in 1948, the health-care institution has been providing health services and resources for Port of Spain and other communities, church leaders said.

“The new clinic represents a commitment to providing cost-effective and improved health services in the heart of the university campus, ensuring that students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community with high-quality health-care services to improve their overall well-being,” Stephen Carryl, Community Hospital administrator, said.

USC president Colwick Wilson said the partnership will result in the strengthening of practical elements of the university’s existing and emerging curricula in the areas of nurse education, allied health, occupational therapy, social work, business management, and computer science. The partnership will offer internships to students and other forms of mutually beneficial engagements. “This [collaboration] has already begun and will deepen in the medium and the long term,” Wilson said.

While The Community Hospital is undergoing efforts to digitize medical records, Carryl said, a partnership with the university “would be a fertile place for students of computer science and IT to see such a process play out and to participate in the same.” Carryl envisions The Community Hospital and USC having a strategic relationship where “USC students would have a home at the hospital where they could rotate and The Community Hospital can emerge as a teaching hospital for USC students.”

The partnership of the institutions was prompted as Carryl and Wilson, long-time friends for more than 40 years, recently began to discuss challenges and opportunities facing the organizations they lead.  This led to a recognition that cooperation could create a whole that was greater than the sum of the parts, Wilson said. As the hospital planned to engage with the university’s health-care service, the partnership later became more organized and focused. The venture moved to a selection of a joint leadership team and a thoughtful expansion of the list of services to be offered, he said.

Already there have been meaningful discussions with Trinidad’s Ministry of Health about the provision of services to special niches of the wider population in the nation, Carryl said.

The opening of The Community Hospital USC Medical Clinic included vision screenings, nutrition consultations, and blood pressure and blood sugar testing, as well as free doctor consultations.

The original version of this story was posted on the Inter-American Division news site.