Maria de Lourdes Carrillo is among the many parents at Golden Avenue Elementary who are looking forward to the opening of a free health clinic inside the school in early March.

The 41-year-old mother of two has not had a full check-up in 16 years. “It’s the money,” she said.

Carrillo does not have health insurance. Whenever she gets sick she just “tolerates it,” she said. She’s afraid of what a visit to a hospital or clinic might cost her family.

The UCSD Student-Run Free Clinic will remove the financial barriers that prevent many of the working poor families at the K-6  school from getting comprehensive health care. “It’s for the ones who don’t have insurance and to help families get access” to health coverage, Golden Avenue School Principal Rick Oser said.

Doctors and doctors in training will staff the clinic, which will operate Monday and Friday afternoons and limit services to families with children at the school. The Lemon Grove School District Board of Trustees approved the opening of the clinic in December. Registration begins Friday, Jan. 21, and the clinic is scheduled to open March 4 for services.

Access to health care is a major issue at the school, where most of the 560 students come from low-income families. More than 60 percent are Latino.

About 40 percent of the adult parents at the school don’t have insurance. Most of their children qualify for some form of public health coverage but 17 percent don’t, according to a school survey.

“For many families it’s the same concern,” Oser said. “Do I get this checked out or do I feed my family and keep a roof over my head?”

The UCSD Student-Run Free Clinic Project is administered through the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine and has clinics that serve about 2,000 people annually at  Baker Elementary School in the San Diego neighborhood of Mountain View, First Lutheran Church in downtown San Diego and United Methodist Church in Pacific Beach.

Dr. Ellen Beck, who founded the free clinic project in 1997, has been working with Golden Avenue Elementary for the past five years on the development of a comprehensive wellness program for staff members, school children, their families and their environment. The school has raised more than $1 million to help pay for part-time wellness instructors and other services. “This is the final piece of that model,” Oser said about the new health clinic.

UCSD student-run free clinics operate with a $1.6 million budget, mainly from private donations and grants. Patients are provided with prescriptions, medical supplies, diagnostic tests and case management. More than 100 doctors, dentists, pharmacists serve as volunteers and student advisors. More than 250 medical students have received training through their participation in the project.

The clinic will help parents  like Guadalupe Arteaga, who has two children at Golden Avenue Elementary.

 Her husband, a restaurant worker, has diabetes, which is costly to manage without health insurance. “We don’t have the solvency to continue paying,” she said about the regular treatment he receives at regular clinics, which charge based on a sliding scale fee.

Arteaga  wants to get a mammogram because cancer runs in her family, but was told by a clinic it would cost her $250.

“I can feed my family for three weeks for that much,” she said. She plans to get a mammogram with help from the new clinic.

PTA President Emma Rios said the new clinic will help alleviate many of the health concerns at the school.

“It’s important for parents to have a place where they can go with confidence,” she said.