{"id":95852,"date":"2014-08-27T08:26:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T12:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=95852"},"modified":"2015-11-24T17:00:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T22:00:12","slug":"hartfords-burgdorf-clinic-is-rooted-in-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/08\/hartfords-burgdorf-clinic-is-rooted-in-the-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Hartford’s Burgdorf Clinic is Rooted in the Community"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Bruce Gould, foreground, makes holes in the soil to plant seedlings, while UConn Master Gardener Sheila Dworkin plants lettuce in the community garden in the grounds of the Burgdorf Clinic. (Chris DeFrancesco\/UConn Health Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Patients at the Burgdorf\/Bank of American Health Center, a community clinic for the underserved in Hartford\u2019s North End, can get a side of fresh vegetables with their health care.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible because of a community garden planted on the Burgdorf grounds in 2011 that continues to thrive.<\/p>\n

The Burgdorf, located at 131 Coventry St., is a collaboration between UConn Health and Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, staffed by UConn and Saint Francis clinicians as well as UConn medical, dental, and pharmacy students. The produce is provided to patients through the medicine and pediatric clinics, the Burgdorf\u2019s emergency food bank, and through the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC) at the Hartford Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Bruce Gould and UConn Master Gardener Sheila Dworkin plant lettuce in the garden, which is located on Coventry Street in Hartford’s North End. (Chris DeFrancesco\/UConn Health Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve put roots down in the community, and we\u2019ve been nurturing and strengthening those roots for four years now,\u201d says Dr. Bruce Gould, associate dean for primary care at the UConn School of Medicine and medical director of the Burgdorf and Hartford DHHS. \u201cIt\u2019s a metaphor for our presence here. We\u2019re on the leading edge of community nutrition. What we have here is an opportunity to produce food for our patients and to teach them about healthy eating. It\u2019s all part of primary care and community health.\u201d<\/p>\n

If healthy eating is a preventive medicine tool, communities like Hartford\u2019s North End are at a disadvantage by being in a \u201cfood desert,\u201d a term used to describe neighborhoods where access to healthy food choices is lacking. The expense of fresh and unprocessed foods tends to steer consumers toward cheaper processed foods, and local supermarkets are scarce compared to the suburbs.<\/p>\n

\"UConn<\/a>
UConn Master Gardener Sarah Bailey offers guidance to local resident Robert Harris, as he harvests green beans from the Burgdorf Community Garden. (Chris DeFrancesco\/UConn Health Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis garden helps me feed my family and other families in the neighborhood,\u201d says local resident Robert Harris.<\/p>\n

Saint Francis dietitian Jessica Sutton, who helps harvest and distribute the produce to patients, says the concept of fresh produce isn\u2019t always familiar to a low-income population.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people have never seen these vegetables,\u201d Sutton says. \u201cA lot of our patients don\u2019t have yards or gardens, so to see them growing, it\u2019s a learning experience. Fruits and vegetables are expensive, and our patients are more prone to buying junk food because it\u2019s cheap. It\u2019s nice to provide them with fresh produce that they normally couldn\u2019t afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s garden yielded about 350 pounds of produce. The garden\u2019s caretakers expect to surpass that this year, perhaps tallying 500 pounds or more. They also have handed out potted tomato, eggplant, and pepper plants for patients to bring home and watch them grow.<\/p>\n

\"Kellie<\/a>
Kellie O\u2019Keefe, left, fourth-year student at the UConn School of Dental Medicine, and Caroline Rogi, third-year student at the UConn School of Medicine, bag produce in the Burgdorf Community Garden. (Bruce Gould\/UConn Health Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Volunteers from the UConn Extension Master Gardener Program<\/a> provide expertise and labor to keep the garden thriving. UConn undergraduates and medical, dental, and pharmacy students in the Urban Service Track<\/a> also are pitching in, as well as participants in the UConn campus-community partnership Husky Sport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can use this as a teaching space for the neighborhood,\u201d says Sarah Bailey, the UConn Extension Master Gardener coordinator for Hartford County. \u201cWe\u2019re planning to have tours, where folks can walk through the garden and learn more about vegetables.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gould says a majority of the produce comes by way of seedlings donated by Pickn\u2019 Patch, a farm in Avon. The program has also received support from the Hartford Department of Health and Human Services, CIGNA, the Knox Park Foundation, the Hartford Food System, and Ecological Landscape Designs of West Hartford.<\/p>\n

The Burgdorf was founded in 1970 as the outpatient service for what was then known as the UConn Health Center, which initially occupied the old McCook State Hospital on the corner of Coventry and Holcomb streets, a block away.<\/p>\n

Follow <\/em>UConn Health<\/em><\/a> on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>, and <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An urban garden outside a North End clinic for the underserved provides fresh produce and education on nutrition and health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":95871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,1868,179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-95852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-meds","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 23:10:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95852"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96045,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95852\/revisions\/96045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/95871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95852"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=95852"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=95852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}