Dirne Center awarded grant to expand care for homeless

A federal grant will help the Dirne Community Health Center serve more of Kootenai County’s homeless population.

At $440,000 a year indefinitely, the grant will help the nonprofit health care center expand its services to the homeless, as well as care for more of the county’s uninsured.

Dirne Center officials hadn’t expected to receive the funding after waiting more than a year for a response to their application for the “expanded medical capacity grant” from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. “We were pretty shocked it was accepted,” said Luke Malek, former Dirne communications development director who helped write the grant.

Quite a bit of research was done in collaboration with other Kootenai County agencies to determine the need for medical care among the county’s homeless population, said Dr. Leanne Rousseau, the center’s medical director. There are about 5,000 homeless people in the county.

The award will provide the center with a stable income to maintain its homeless care program. However, “even with this grant, we still need support from the community,” said Hollie Baker, director of development.

The Dirne Center provides care for people who have no health insurance or limited insurance. The center offers medical and dental care and mental health services. Using the new grant, Dirne will expand its homeless program by adding two medical providers and support staff. St. Vincent de Paul, partnering with Dirne, will provide medical screening, vaccinations, mental health counseling and group education to those patients.

The clinic also expects to be able to provide an additional 6,000 visits to the uninsured annually with the new grant.

The new grant brings federal funding for the Dirne Center to $1 million a year.