Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is cutting the commute for Southside parents. On June 29, the system will open Children’s Adamsville Pediatrics in Adamsville, bringing a full pediatric primary care clinic to Southwest Atlanta for patients from newborns through age 21. The site is designed to shorten those long drives to care and double as a training ground for medical residents.
According to a news release from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Children’s Adamsville Pediatrics will begin seeing patients June 29 and will operate Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Wednesday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The practice will offer prenatal consults and newborn visits, well-child checkups and immunizations, same-day sick visits, chronic-condition management, screenings and specialist referrals as an extension of the Hughes Spalding Primary Care Clinic.
Children’s marked the opening with a ribbon cutting Monday at 3571 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SW, attended by system executives and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, WSB-TV reported. Ron Frieson, Children’s chief operating officer, said “the part of Atlanta south of I-20 has been referred to as a healthcare desert,” a pointed reminder of the gap this clinic is intended to help fill.
Replacing the Care Mobile and widening access
The Adamsville location will serve as a medical home for children previously seen on the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, which Children’s discontinued May 1. It is also one step in a broader expansion that includes a pediatric floor in a new Grady Health System medical office building planned for Union City in 2028, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said. The health system describes these moves as part of a long-term plan to ensure families across metro Atlanta are within about 30 minutes of a Children’s facility.
Training the next generation of pediatricians
The clinic will also function as a training site for medical residents from Emory University School of Medicine and Morehouse School of Medicine, a setup officials say helps build a pipeline of pediatricians who may stay and practice in communities that need them, FOX 5 Atlanta reported. Placing residents in neighborhood clinics is a strategy health systems have used to increase primary care capacity in underserved areas.
At the ribbon cutting, speakers praised the clinic as both a neighborhood medical home and a teaching site that can keep care closer to families, WSB-TV reported. Families seeking appointments or more information can contact Children’s directly.
