Culture
A Great Place to Put Community Health Clinics: Fire Stations
A new firehouse clinic in California shows how an abundant but under-used public resource—fire stations—can be made even more useful for a community.
City officials in Hayward, California, broke ground this month on a new fire station that includes a first in community design for the city, the county, the state, and maybe even the nation: a built-in health clinic.
It's a novel idea that Alameda County officials have been kicking around for a while now. And it's one that makes a lot of sense for cities beyond Hayward, according to an architect who drafted a set of design guidelines to explain how a so-called Firehouse Clinic should work.