Residents place stickies to questions about the center.

RALEIGH – Advance Community Health needs public input to shape its future growth.

LS3P Architect and Project Manager Anita Karimu said Advance is at a “pivotal point” during a campus growth plan workshop, hosted at the Barwell Road Community Center last week.

Advance Community Health is a nonprofit health care center serving Wake and Franklin counties. It offers affordable pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, dental, behavioral, nutrition, pharmacy and primary care services on a sliding fee-scale. “Our aim is generally to help Advance Community Health build a strong future, expand access to services and improve the patient experience, and grow with the community,” Karimu said.

After opening its Southeast Raleigh campus on Tarboro Road, the campus moved to Rock Quarry Road in the late 1990s. Now, it’s looking to expand and needs public input on what it should plan for the site.

“Advance does not want to catch anyone off guard,” Karimu said. “It’s rare, in my experience, to work with an organization like Advance Community Health which is so tied to the community.”

The workshop included feedback stations that asked participants questions  and to offer suggestions. Respondents voted on amenities that would make the site more attractive and fit their needs by placing stickers as “votes” next to topics. Among the responses were a desire for eye care services, legal services, day care and a thrift store as potential businesses in the area. A community garden, fitness area, event plaza, and walking or cycling path received the highest votes for desired amenities.

Community engagement coordinator Eiman Ali said community members also expressed a desire for podiatry, physical therapy and access to food.

Samone Bullock Dillahunt, Advance assistant vice president of marketing, said most patients are between the ages of 24 and 50.

“Advance serves patients who may face certain barriers to health care access like geographic, transportation, financial,” Bullock Dillahunt said. “Southeast Raleigh is a historically Black community, and the patients may have more complex health care needs like chronic conditions. Just conditions that may require more time from providers.”

There are several goals for the growth plan. First, the center wants to become a community anchor with a strong Southeast Raleigh identity.

“We know that healthy communities thrive when they have healthy participants, and health starts in our bodies,” Karimu said. “Advance is really hoping that this whole effort will really lock them into Southeast Raleigh and make sure that when people look at them, they know that that’s an economic driver and a health driver.”

Other goals include integrating nature and wellness to the development, increasing parking and public transit access, and adaptability so that the campus maintains sustainability and use as health care develops into the future.

“Right now, when we look at the timeline for a growth plan like this, we’re talking about what are we going to achieve in the next five years but also what we’re going to achieve in the next 10 years,” Karimu said. “It’s really difficult to always project what the future of health care is going to look like, what technology is going to look like.”

Advance Community Health will host a free Neighborhood Network event on March 28, 10 a.m. to noon, at Chavis Community Center.

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