Patient Education and Outreach

Brookside Community Health Center is committed to helping each client live a healthy productive life.  In addition to offering medical care, we also offer a range of patient education and outreach services to connect patients with the information and resources they need to take care of themselves.

Health Education

• Chronic Disease: Our health education programs focus on helping our clients manage chronic diseases and live healthy lives.  Brookside Community Health Center provides one-on-one counseling for patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease, as well as group classes on nutrition, medication management, and healthy lifestyle choices.

• Sweet Success: Our health educators work with pregnant women who have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes to help them manage their condition during pregnancy and deliver healthy babies.

• Kids Club: Brookside Community Health Center offers a monthly class for children and their care-givers (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and/or babysitters) to learn healthier eating and physical acitivy habits.  Class topics include healthy food preparation, family friendly activities, and reading nutritional labels.  This class is open to general public.

Patient Advocacy
Brookside Community Health Center works with clients to assist them in address social, economic,or insurance related issues that affect their health careof overall quality of life.  We refer to a range of social service agencies for crisis intervention, case management, and follow-up care.

Patient Assistance

• Pharmacy Access: Brookside Community Health Center helps low-income, uninsured patients obtain prescription medication from major pharmaceutical programs for little or no money.  We have partnered with the Vale Pharmacy (located on the 1st floor of our building) to make it easy for patients to see the doctor and pick-up prescriptions in the same visit.
• Enrollment Assistance: Our staff helps patients navigate the application and enrollment process for Medi-Cal and other assistance programs so they can receive balanced, comprehensive health coverage.

Community Health
At Brookside Community Health Center, our goal is to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone that lives and works in Western Contra Costa County, not just for our patients.  We work with community and county partners to find ways to reach residents and help them live healthier lives.  Some of our activities include:

• Celebrating Health

Brookside Community Health Center partners and participates in many community celebrations and events, such Cinco de Mayo, Juneteenth, Iron Triangle Neighborhood Picnic, Harvest Festival by providing health education and offering free health screenings to all attendees.

• Annual Health Fair

We sponsor a health fair every year that focuses on providing much needed health check ups, (glucose testing, blood pressure, cholesterol, dental and vision tests all FREE.  In the past years BCHC has emphasized healthy eating/active living as the main theme of our health fairs.  This emphasis is an excellent fit do to the obesity epedimic among the Latino and African American Communities.  BCHC Health Fair is a day of collaboration with all of our community partners and other non-profits.  At the event each year we provide services to over 500 families in one day.  

• Managing Asthma Triggers

Brookside Community Health Center works with clients who have one or more children suffering from asthma to identify and reduce asthma triggers in their homes.  BCHC staff also partners with local housing and legal groups to connect patients with resources to address in-home triggers.

• Health Services at El Cerrito High School

Brookside Community Health Center provides basic medical care, health education, and referral services to students at El Cerrito High School.  When appropriate, BCHC staff also work with students' families to enroll them in Medi-Cal or Healthy Families programs.

Project REAL- Richmond's Efforts to Abate Lead- is a HUD funded program of the City of Richmond in partnership with the City of San Pablo & Contra Costa County.  Brookside Community Health Center works in partnership with Project Real by providing lead testing to children starting from birth to six years of age  Project REAL will test your home for lead/lead hazards and provide FREE lead abatement services to eligible families in qualifying homes that have children ages 0 to 6 years old living or spending extended periods of time in a home built prior to 1978.