Health Update: Sankofa Wellness Center Preps For April Opening In West Garfield Park – What Experts Say

WEST GARFIELD PARK — A wellness center dedicated to addressing the West Side’s life expectancy gap is almost ready for its spring opening.

The Sankofa Village Wellness Center, 4305 W. Madison St., is gearing up for an April opening as the centerpiece of a larger development aimed at increasing life expectancy for residents and combating generational disinvestment, officials said.

The center will feature multiple health clinics, fitness and recreational programs as well as workforce development opportunities. The three-floor, 60,000-square-foot facility houses tenants including the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, Rush Medical Center, Erie Family Health, West Side United, Equal Hope and the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago.

Services to be offered on-site will include:

• Primary medical care and reproductive, behavioral and dental health services
• Substance abuse disorder treatment and health education programs
• Health screenings
• Mental health and disease prevention training programs
• Workforce development programs
• Fitness services such as group fitness programs and youth and teen sports programs
• Drop-in child care
• Indoor gymnasium and walking track

The building’s lobby has floor-to-ceiling windows adorned with the icon of a sankofa, the center’s namesake and the name of a symbol depicting a bird originating from the Akan people of Ghana.

The lobby’s extra-wide staircase doubles as coworking space. Underneath the staircase is a kiosk run by West Side United that will function to provide West Siders with jobs and job training opportunities.

The first floor also houses the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago’s fitness center, locker rooms and a wellness studio that will hold classes. The YMCA also has a basketball gym that span the second and third floors and includes an elevated walking trail.

Child care will be provided for visitors of the center by the YMCA.

The second floor houses offices for the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, the community organization is one of the minority owners of the center.

Rush University Medical Center also has a suite on the second floor dedicated to behavioral health that will offer mental health counseling plus social support and wellness workshops on disease prevention for chronic conditions such as diabetes. The mental health clinic will primarily treat adults, but a Rush official said they are in the process of hiring a clinician to specialize in serving adolescents and young adults.

“My hope is that being more embedded on the West Side and really showing that commitment, having providers that reflect the communities that we are serving, can really help us to reduce stigma around mental health specifically but also support folks in engaging in their health care and overall wellness in a meaningful way,” said Rebecca Lahey, a mental health manager with Rush who will be overseeing the behavioral health services at Sankofa.

On the third floor, Erie Family Health Centers will serve as the main primary care provider, with a suite that also includes dental and behavioral health clinics. Both health care providers will be able to refer patients to each other, with Erie offering a “health care home” for more acute or specialty services, according to a statement from Erie officials.

The complex also houses Equal Hope, whose space will provide free breast and reproductive cancer screenings for uninsured and underinsured patients. The Sankofa Wellness Village also includes a Community Grocer Initiative to bring pop-up markets to the neighborhood that will provide healthy and fresh food options while working toward a permanent grocer.

A Larger Plan To Improve West Side Life Expectancies

Both Erie and Rush officials said they hope their presence at the wellness center can help tackle the life expectancy gap between Garfield Park and the greater West Side compared to other areas of the city.

West Garfield Park residents live to an average age of 69, compared to 85 for people living in the Loop, according to a 2015 Virginia Commonwealth University report.

A 2021 city study showed a racial life expectancy gap growing between Black and non-Black Chicagoans. Black people in Chicago live about 9 fewer years than non-Black people as they struggle with higher death rates for diabetes-related issues, homicides, HIV and opioids, that report found.

“There’s a significant life expectancy gap here and that’s just one of the health disparities that we see in this neighborhood,” said Kawana Tharps, a family nurse practitioner at Erie who will also serve as the Sankofa site medical director. “The hope is that the center can help bridge that gap.”

The Sankofa Village Wellness Center began construction in fall 2024 and is spearheaded by Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, The Community Builders and MAAFA Redemption Project.

The center is one component of the Sankofa Wellness Village, which last year won the $10 million Chicago Prize from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation. The project cost is estimated at $48 million, according to center officials.

The project will bring resources and investments to the Madison and Pulaski commercial corridor. Other developments within the Sankofa Wellness Village include the K Entrepreneurship Hub at 4400 W. Madison St. and the MAAFA Center for Arts and Activism, which broke ground in September at 4241 W. Washington Blvd., formerly St. Barnabas Episcopal Church.

The arts center will be the home base for the MAAFA Redemption Project, a social justice ministry of New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, 4301 W. Washington Blvd., which bought the St. Barnabas building in 2014.

Taken together, the center’s wraparound services will help produce better holistic health outcomes for the West Side, Tharps said.

“Health doesn’t begin in an exam room,” Tharps said. “It’s the other things that the center as a whole is offering as well: the YMCA, physical activity, nutrition classes, workforce engagement. It’s not just health care, even though clearly as Erie that is our primary concern.”

For more information, visit the project’s website.

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