A DRIVE to improve a community's health has been boosted with the launch of neighbourhood clinics.

Hartlepool Primary Care Trust has set up a nurses-run clinic in the Owton Rossmere Resource Centre on the town's Wynyard Road.

It follows the launch of a similar walk-in clinic at Greatham, with others planned for the Headland and the town centre.

Two community project nurses - Cynthia Alder and Jenny Jones - will be based at Wynyard Road where they will treat minor ailments and injuries, provide health, lifestyle and contraception advice and carry out smear tests.

Both women are nurse prescribers, allowing patients to obtain prescriptions for minor ailments from an agreed list without having to make an appointment with a doctor.

The move, in an area said to be the 25th most deprived neighbourhood in the county, is also to relieve pressure on the hospital's accident and emergency department because many people use that rather than their doctor, because it is on a direct bus route.

Mrs Alder said: "It's nice to have something people can access locally for advice and minor issues.

"They don't have to travel or wait for an appointment and if you can provide something like this you can often stop minor things becoming major."

Newly-elected Labour MP Iain Wright said: "We have a challenge in this town to promote good health so something like this is absolutely vital."