COMMUNITY OUTREACH: WALD CENTER

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing Lillian D. Wald Community Nursing Center is one of a few health programs in Baltimore City providing nearly barrier-free health services to poor, uninsured or under insured residents at no charge to them.

Founded in 1994 at the Rutland Center in East Baltimore, the Wald Center is the first nurse-managed clinic at the Johns Hopkins University.

Graduate and undergraduate students are mentored in all aspects of operating our clinic sites such as in clinical practice, independent and credited course practice, research, and course clinical placements. Students are also employed as clinical nurse associates during their undergraduate experience and community health nurses if they are enrolled in our graduate program.

A WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program is also run through the Rutland Center.  WIC is a federally funded program that provides nutrition education and nutritious supplements for pregnant women, mothers who are breastfeeding, women who have just given birth, and infants and children up to age 5. 

Initially the clinic was organized to offer complete physical examinations and routine preventive pediatric services, immunizations and lead screening to uninsured children who would need these in a timely fashion lest they be denied eligibility to Head Start, day care, school, camp, athletic and after school activities. In 1996, WIC was added to services offered at this site. Adult services were added in 1997.

Wald Center health services are mobile and can be taken wherever there is a need for a "clinic without walls."   Although Rutland is the original site of the Wald Center, additional sites have been established at the House of Ruth and St. Bernardine's Catholic School.