City-Run Englewood Clinic Abruptly Shuttered

Federal funding gets cut, yet HIV rates remain high in vulnerable communities. An investigation for the South Side Weekly

In early December, the Teamwork Englewood office received an anonymous call from an affiliate of the Chicago Department of Public Health alerting them that the Englewood STI Specialty Clinic—one of four city-run clinics offering free testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections—would be shutting down.

On December 11, Nicole Johnson sent out an email to the neighborhood’s Health & Wellness Task Force, of which she is a member, outlining her concerns: that Englewood residents without health insurance would be left without reproductive healthcare; that walk-in treatment and testing for HIV and other STIs would cease to be available in the neighborhood; and that this marks a continuing trend of public disinvestment from Englewood.

“The city has this incessant reliance on private services to address public needs,” she wrote.

Read the article here.