University Hospitals has opened the doors to its new 40,000-square-foot, three-story community healthcare facility: the UH Rainbow Center for Women and Children. Located at the corner of Euclid Avenue and E. 59^th Street, the center will follow a unique healthcare model that will not only offer complete medical care to patients, but also serve as a community resource to meet the demands of the neighborhood.

“As a primary care physician, I’m really excited about this,” says Aparna Bole, co-medical director of the center and division chief of general academic pediatrics and adolescent medicine at UH Rainbow. “What we’re hearing from patients is that consolidated care is important to them. As caregivers, we’re concerned that they are getting access to the services they need. We think this is one-stop shopping for a lot of needs.”

The $26 million project—which was funded through support from donors and New Markets tax credits—will move two clinics from the main campus (which collectively logged 45,000 patient visits per year) to the new center. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in December 2016, with Ozanne Construction officially starting construction last spring.

The UH Center for Women and Children will provide pediatric primary care and adolescent medicine, as well as pregnancy and gynecologic medical care for women—practices previously housed on the first floor of the main UH hospital, which was not necessarily a convenient location, says Bole.

The new center will also have space for dental care, OneSight vision clinic, integrated mental and behavioral health services, group care, a pharmacy, WIC office, and legal services.

“It just became clear this wasn’t the best location to be in the hospital,” she explains. “Navigating the campus and hospital—not to mention access to public transportation or free parking—were [issues]. All of these services are based on what our patients were telling us they need.”

The freestanding clinic, designed by Moody Nolan, is in the heart of MidTown, with easy access to RTA’s HealthLine and free parking in the rear of the building. Inside the building, Bole says colorful hallways and creative wayfinding signs featuring drawings of Cleveland landmarks will make it easier for visitors to find the offices and services they need.

The center will also house training for more than 90 pediatric caregivers, 25 OB/GYN residents, medical, nursing, and mental health students. “There ‘s a lot of education going on at our site,” Bole says.

When designing the new center, Bole says planners looked at various healthcare models to come up with a model of all-inclusive care that is unlike any other system. The result? Comprehensive and complete services that address medical, social, and environmental issues that affect health.

“There’s not really anyone doing exactly this,” she says. “We’re really on the leading edge of how we thought about medicine and comprehensive care.”

Adding to the comprehensive care model, a planned Dave’s Market nearby is scheduled to open in 2019. “Access to healthy food and education about nutrition are the things we value,” explains Bole. “Dave’s will provide access to healthy food and education about nutrition from the dietician. Dave’s is very responsive in meeting with the community, and their testing kitchen can be used for product [demos] and teaching about healthy food and shopping on a budget.”

The center itself was designed with environmental health and sustainability in mind, Bole says. The building is energy-efficient, taking air quality and storm water management into account, and only healthy materials were used in construction. A solar array provides half of the building’s energy use.

“I don’t know of a greener healthcare building in our region,” says Bole. “We’re aiming for the highest designation of LEED certification.”

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Friday, June 29. The clinics remained open at UH’s main campus until this morning, when the UH Rainbow Center for Women and Children began seeing patients.