Agape Clinic History

The mission of the Agape Clinic is to provide quality health care services unconditionally to underserved people.

The Agape Clinic Begins...
​ In 1983 Barbara Stark Baxter, MD called the Dallas County Medical Society (DCMS) to ask about physician volunteer opportunities in Dallas. Bob Heath, the director of DCMS said he didn’t recall previously having such an inquiry. He referred Dr. Baxter to Los Barrios Unidos, a clinic in West Dallas.

 Horace Sarabia, the clinic’s Executive Director, feared that having a physician volunteer would jeopardize its federal funding, but he invited Dr. Baxter to join the clinic’s board of directors. A month later at a board meeting at Los Barrios, a woman named Dorothy Flores came looking for a doctor to start a clinic in a Methodist Church in East Dallas. God answers prayers In early July, Dr. Baxter and her husband David were shown a 12-foot by 13-foot closet in the basement of Grace United Methodist Church with light bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling. This was the future clinic. David hired contractors to install plumbing and electrical upgrades to the closet, and the Baxter's’ Celebrations Sunday School Class from Highland Park United Methodist built cabinets for the little facility and painted the hallway. "I was fresh from residency, so I bought a few medications used only at Parkland, like quinidine," Dr. Baxter says. "I had little outpatient experience beyond the Emergency Room!”  She did her best to set up the supplies and medications used in a family practice outpatient clinic.

The Clinic Opens!!!
On Saturday August 20, 1983, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Reverend Ken Dickson of HPUMC and Reverend Bill Bryan of Grace UMC.  Three patients were seen. Word spread.  Through contact with a nurse named Karen Herndon, the clinic became a vaccine administration site for the Dallas County Health Department, and soon Dr. Baxter, other doctors and a staff of nurse volunteers were administering immunizations along with seeing sick patients. ​

Success and Growth...
In 1993, the members of Grace Church began a ten-year capital campaign called “Saving Grace” and they restored and renovated large parts of the church. One of their first projects was to expand the clinic for Dr. Baxter and they applied for and won a large grant from the Meadows Foundation. The clinic grew to five examination rooms.   For the first seventeen years, the clinic was open only on Saturdays. Hundreds of volunteers participated in the care. Volunteers from the Grace congregation played a vital role in staffing and coordinating the clinic and served on the board of directors.  Dr. Baxter has continued to take an active role in the clinic’s growth and development as others have provided new ideas and energy to the mission. She currently serves as Medical Director and continues to see patients.

The Clinic matures and expands...
In 2000, the clinic merged with Baylor Community Care, a clinic started by nursing professor Charles Kemp in a police store front. Charles, a Vietnam War veteran, was also very active in serving refugees from a variety of countries. He expanded the clinic's sessions to include Thursdays and Fridays in addition to Saturdays. When Hurricane Katrina caused mass evacuations from Louisiana, Agape expanded to Wednesdays. Charles and Dr. Carrie Kovarik started the first specialty clinic within Agape for dermatologic disorders.

Charles raised funds so that the clinic could grow in scope. He saw the need to hire promotoras (Latino lay health promoters) and nurse practitioners. He approached LabCorp to do free laboratory tests on Agape patients, thereby connecting the clinic to its largest current sustaining donor. Charles' wife Leslie served as one of the early Executive Directors as well, and together, Charles and Leslie shepherded the expanded clinic through the ten years from 2000 to 2010.  Leslie and Charles were both educators, and one way of obtaining additional volunteers for Agape has been to invite various student groups to participate in providing the care, starting with nursing students from Baylor University's Louise Herrington School of Nursing and then expanding to include students from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Southern Methodist University, Texas Women’s University and other local educational institutions. Leslie retired in 2010 and the clinic formed a search committee to select a new Executive Director.

The Clinic gets a new home...
​Stephanie Bohan joined Agape as Executive Director in 2010. The Clinic expanded and demand for health services continued to increase. Inspired by Dr. Baxter’s desire for no one to be turned away for care and by her continuing volunteer service, combined with Charles Kemp’s student clinical partnership model, Stephanie sought to expand both models for providing care. This, combined with securing new resources to increase the paid staff hours, allowed Agape to grow and add services.

In 2013, Stephanie introduced the clinic’s first capital campaign since 1993 and the church generously donated additional space for Agape to expand from 5 rooms to 11. Hours extended to six days a week. Shortly thereafter, a survey of the patients revealed a desperate need for dental care. A partnership was struck with Texas A&M College of Dentistry for a full-service dental clinic at Agape. However, this doubled the Clinic’s need for space. Directly across the street from Grace United Methodist Church, God provided a medical practice building that precisely met the requirements. Bohan completed a $2.4 million capital campaign to purchase and renovate the 10,000 square foot building, which opened in 2016. Presently, the clinic is open 7 days a week, with multiple new teaching clinics added in the evenings, in association with Methodist Hospital and UT Southwestern Medical School. An all-volunteer refugee clinic is open on Sundays. Many new specialists have added their expertise, and the clinic continues to grow and expand