By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM — Cortez Gallaway, a junior at Hillside New Tech High School, sat on a cushioned examining table as Anne Derouin peered into his ears.

Gallaway wants to play basketball, baseball, too, maybe golf, for his high school this year. He was at the new Thursday afternoon teen clinic at the new Holton Career and Resource Center because he needed a sports physical.

Derouin, a pediatric nurse practitioner with Duke University’s Division of Community Health, kept up a steady patter in the immaculate examining room, one of nine at the site, as she checked out Gallaway’s hearing, peripheral vision, core spinal strength, hand grip and more.

“You really play golf?” she asked.

“What courses are you taking this year?” “How is AP psychology going?”

“Do you want a flu shot today?”

“Remember, with the flu around, you’ve really got to be crazy about washing your hands.”

Gallaway comes to the teen clinic, which opened at its new location at the end of August, for his regular medical care.

“I heard good things about it, from some friends and my mother,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice service, and they treat you like a man, not a kid. They know you’re not 10 years old anymore.”

Derouin, the facility’s sole provider who also runs a clinic inside Southern High School during the academic year, said that many teens don’t have a health care provider and coming to see her is easier than the alternatives.

“They don’t want to see the provider they saw when they were little kids,” she said. “They might not be comfortable talking to their baby doctor or their mom’s doctor. And they don’t want to go to the Health Department. It’s easier to come here where they know they can find someone they can trust. We really are a safety net for them.”

Derouin sees about half a dozen teens every Thursday, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The teen clinic is part of a Holton Wellness Center facility that is open every work day and sees all types of patients.

The teen service replaced a once-a-week health care service for adolescents at Walltown Neighborhood Clinic on Broad Street. The school clinics — there’s another one at Hillside — were the only ones in the community specifically dedicated to adolescents and were so popular, Duke and Lincoln Community Health Center determined there was a real need for a permanent out-of-school clinic for them.

“We had so many students call us during the summer or after hours, we needed something else for them,” Derouin said.

They also needed more space.

The Walltown Clinic had four examination rooms while the Holton facility offers nine. “This is so much bigger,” Derouin said, “and it’s so, so beautiful. It’s clean and sparkling.”

The new clinic, on the main floor at Holton, has the efficient but cozy look of a private doctor’s office. A receptionist behind a glass window makes appointments while two teens — one maneuvering on her crutches — wait in comfortable chairs for their turn to be seen.

The clinic offers immunizations, well-child checkups, sports physicals. It takes care of sore throats, acne, women’s health issues and contraception.

“We are seeing people who are coming that we’ve never seen before,” said Fred Johnson, the deputy director of Duke’s Division of Community Health. “It looks like we’re really struck a chord here.”