GLASGOW — Staff and volunteers of the T.J. Samson Education Resource Center have been very busy during the last few weeks packing up and moving to the facility’s new location.

The resource center, which has been in Central Center Shopping Center on Happy Valley Road for several years, is being relocated to 1060 Glenview Drive, the former home of Dr. Robert and Doris McKinley. T.J. Samson Community Hospital bought the property for $1.75 million in April 2008.

Clients of the center will see few changes other than location, according to Scot Smith, RN, BA, Nurse Educator for TJSERC.

Days and hours of operation will remain the same, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. Smith and Susie Bishop, RN, along with two or three hospital volunteers, will continue to offer the same programs available at the center’s previous location such has health screenings, various support group meetings, CPR and babysitting classes. Even the telephone number is the same.

“And we will continue to have a computer out there with Internet access. The public can use it to research medical, health-related questions and we have the resource library,” Smith said.

Many of the center’s regulars have been told about the upcoming move.

“We have already notified all of the support group members and the regular attendees or participants of our various functions,” Smith said.

The center will officially open on Monday, Aug. 2, but Smith said the move is essentially complete.

“We have just about everything moved. For all practical purposes, we will be operating out of that location starting Monday (yesterday),” he said.

The staff found out about the upcoming move about six weeks ago, Smith said. And while the space of the new location is smaller, he doesn’t see any logistical problems.

“The overall square footage is probably less, but we’ll be making more efficient use of our space,” he said.

The plan is to have staff education meetings upstairs and all the community activities downstairs. When people come to health screenings they may feel more relaxed because they’re walking into a former home rather than stepping into a clinical environment, according to Smith.

“It’s going to have a nice, homey atmosphere,” he said. “Their physical surrounding will be very aesthetically pleasing. I think the public will enjoy that.”

Some other advantages of the new location are the proximity to the hospital and fewer traffic concerns on Glenview Drive than there were on Happy Valley Road.

“The road out here is very busy. It’s difficult to get in and out. I sometimes spend four or five minutes trying to get out down here. We won’t have those traffic issues. It will be much safer to access the new location,” Smith said.

“We just want people to know where we are and that the community events are ongoing,” he said.

The Education Resource Center began offering services in 1998 and the decision was made not to renew the lease due to expense, according to hospital spokesperson Bart Logsdon.

“This service is a very valuable resource for T.J. Samson and the community. The property at 1060 Glenview Drive is owned by T.J. Samson and was currently vacant. This space was a natural fit for the function of the educational resource center and it provides an accessible yet quiet location for this function,” he said.

For more information, call Scot Smith or Susie Bishop at 651-4745 or go to www.tjsamson.org.

Women’s Health Center

The McKinley residence was initially slated to house the Women’s Health Center, but the determination was made the property would not meet the needs of that project.

“A very preliminary study was conducted by an architectural firm for T.J. Samson to identify if the McKinley home could be renovated for a Women’s Health Center. The study indicated that the property could accommodate a certain level of services,” said Logsdon. “Upon a more in-depth analysis, it was determined that it would be difficult to incorporate all programmatic elements in this location. The vision for the T.J. Samson Women’s Health Center was to offer a wide breath of services for all women, throughout the stages of their life. The space did not allow us to incorporate all these services. At that time a decision was made to investigate other potential options.”

A new location for the Women’s Health Center is yet to be determined.