Venice Family Clinic

Venice Family Clinic provides comprehensive primary health care, including medications, diagnosis, treatment, follow-up care, and laboratory tests.

Venice Family Clinic provides a full range of teen health services at school-based clinics at Culver City Middle School/High School, Santa Monica High School, and the Robert Levine Family Health Center, near Venice High School. Comprehensive primary care includes physicals and reproductive health care, diagnostic testing and medications, health education, mental health services, and weight management.

The Clinic’s women’s health program features obstetrics and gynecological visits, including family planning, prenatal care, breast and cervical cancer screening, obstetrics, and gynecology. The cornerstone of the program is prenatal care, which includes medical care, health education, mental health services, and support services.

Venice Family Clinic provides a combination of clinic- and shelter-based services, as well as mobile outreach, to homeless people. This includes the “street medicine” program, in which physicians, with the help of staff from local homeless service agencies, make weekly visits to areas where the homeless congregate to provide a modicum of services and encourage those in need of treatment to visit Venice Family Clinic or other agencies, as appropriate.

Venice Family Clinic helps patients manage chronic illnesses such as asthma, cardio-vascular disease, depression, and diabetes. For example, it provides medical, educational, and support services to asthmatics to enhance self-care and reduce the costly and vicious cycle of emergency room visits. And through a multi-disciplinary team, the Clinic teaches diabetic patients the causes and consequences of their disease, how to monitor their blood sugar levels, and the importance of good nutrition and physical exercise. Both programs feature electronic registries to help facilitate case management and monitor outcomes.

The Clinic provide a wide range of vision care services, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, case coordination, and prescription eye glasses. Retinal screening services are provided through a telemedicine partnership with the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA.

Staff and volunteer physicians screen children and their parents during medical visits, perform fluoride varnishes on children as needed, and refer patients appropriately to the Clinic’s staff dental team or partner agencies. The Clinic’s staff dental team provides exams, x-rays, cleanings, extractions, root canals, and fillings, and oral hygiene education.

The Clinic provides treatment and counseling to HIV-infected patients, as well as anonymous HIV testing and outreach to the community.

Through a network of volunteers, Venice Family Clinic provides a wide range of specialty care, including cardiology, dermatology, ear/nose/throat, endocrinology, neurology, gastroenterology, optometry, ophthalmology, and orthopedics.

With the generous support of The Simms/Mann Family Foundation, Venice Family Clinic has launched the nation’s first health, wellness and integrative medicine program offered at a community clinic. Simms/Mann Health and Wellness Programs provide a wide range of evidence-based integrated services, which focus on the whole person and the whole family. In addition to high-quality conventional care, integrative medical services include disease management, prevention, and wellness programs. Multimodality approaches to chronic disease are utilized including mind-body therapies, acupuncture, chiropractic, and osteopathic care.

Venice Family Clinic enhances patients’ health care through education about nutrition, disease management, reproductive counseling, prenatal care, child safety, pediatric literacy, teen health, dental health, and substance abuse.

The Clinic’s mental health program provides counseling, psychiatric services, and psychosocial support related to the social stress of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and domestic violence. Services include crisis intervention as well as individual, family, and group therapy.

Venice Family Clinic’s Safe Families Domestic Violence Intervention Program helps more than 250 women per year. Services include individual and group counseling, advocacy, and emergency medical care. The program also serves children who witness violence between their parents.

Venice Family Clinic helps eligible patients enroll, and stay enrolled, in Managed Care Insurances like HealthNet, HCLA Medi-Cal, HCLA Blue Cross, and other available programs for patients who are eligible.

Children First is Venice Family Clinic’s Early Head Start program. Early Head Start is a federally funded, comprehensive child development program designed to improve the quality of life for young children by strengthening families through intensive case management, parent education, and parent empowerment.