The Luck Care Center is the manifest vision of the late Dr. Sherry Luck who, in 1994, saw the need for local providers to care for HIV infected and affected persons in underserved area of Chicago. Through diligence and perseverance, Dr. Luck was instrumental in providing HIV-positive patients on the far south side with expert medical care. Sherry L. Luck, MD, medical director, founded the Roseland Community Hospital HIV clinic in 1994 with her own personal funds and later funding from the Ryan White Care Act to provide quality services. After Dr. Luck’s untimely death in 1999, the clinic was renamed in her honor (1954-1999).
Today, Dr. William Johnson and his wife Bethsheba Johnson continue the vision of Dr. Sherry Luck. Dr. William Johnson is the Medical Director of the Luck Care Center and President of the Southside Health Association. Bethsheba Johnson is a Nurse Practitioner and Luck Care Center’s Clinical Coordinator.
The Luck Care Center is an HIV/AIDS primary care specialty clinic. Our mission is to provide comprehensive, culturally competent, holistic and compassionate care to our HIV-positive clients. People with HIV/AIDS have unique problems that go beyond the medical aspects of the disease. The social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS requently results in loss of emotional and physical support from family and friends. Even when this support exists, the enormous demands of the disease can create burdens beyond the patient’s and/or their family’s ability to cope.
Having a specialty clinic with a multidisciplinary team allows for anticipation of needs before they occur and provides for coordination of efforts focused on meeting such needs. When a person has HIV/AIDS, the whole community is affected. The Luck Care Center is a response to the dire need in our community. Prior to establishing this clinic a comprehensive program to address the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS on the far Southside of Chicago did not exist.
The Luck Care Center serves over 200 HIV/AIDS positive persons annually in the Chicago land area. We serve a primarily indigent population with the vast majority of patients being uninsured or underinsured.
Regardless of a patients ability to pay no patient is refused healthcare at the Luck Care Center. The Luck Care Center is the only clinic independently operated by African Americans in the state of Illinois serving the growing number of African American infected and affected by HIV/AIDS on the Southside of Chicago.