The People’s Health Clinic is taking to the streets, visiting grocery stores and churches to spread the word about the clinic’s resources for uninsured patients and providing free screenings to check for diabetes and high blood pressure.

“We are going back to our roots,” said Executive Director of People’s Health Clinic Nann Worel referring to the clinic’s first year which was spent in a mobile van. “A lot of people don’t know about us and what we offer.”

The clinic will offer free basic health screenings throughout the year. Volunteers with the clinic visited two churches in January and made appointments for 10 new patients to follow up on health issues that were found during the screenings.

“If we find that someone has high blood pressure or may have diabetes, we can make appointments right then and there for people to come in and have an exam,” Worel said. “Often it is a combination of people not realizing they have health issues or they have lost their health insurance and they don’t know what resources are out there. That’s why we are bringing the clinic to where the people are.”

People’s Health Outreach Coordinator Sarah Klingenstein said the clinic plans on visiting two locations a month to conduct free screenings.

“We were able to screen 24 people when we visited St. Mary’s church in January and, unlike some clinics, we can make appointments for people within four days if necessary after the screening,” she said. “We want to go to locations where people will be who have not had a check-up recently and encourage them to come in for a yearly exam. We want to catch the first signs of a disease rather than having patients come in when they already have diabetes and need medicine.”

Thanks to the availability of medical volunteers, Klingenstein said the clinic is more like a family doctor than a place to only visit when something is wrong.

Worel is hoping the outreach program will increase the number of patients the clinic serves and continue to be a resource for the community.

“In 2011, we had a 21 percent increase in our patients from 2010,” she said. “When we first began in 2000 we saw 710 patients, in 2011 we served 8,600 people and are hoping that number continues to grow.”

The People’s Health Clinic offers medical care to uninsured residents of Summit and Wasatch counties. The next mobile health screening will be at Anaya’s Market on Wednesday, Feb. 1 from 5-7 p.m. The free health screenings are open to the public.