Nearly 60 years ago, Community Health Centers began as a bold experiment to bring healthcare to the nation's overlooked rural and urban communities. Today, health centers are the best, most innovative, most resilient, and diverse part of America's healthcare system.
Community Health Centers are the best, most innovative, most resilient, and most diverse part of America's healthcare system.
Since their inception in the 1960s, Community Health Centers have understood that where we live, work, worship and play affects our health, also known as the social drivers of health. Health centers are experts at reaching beyond the clinic walls to address the barriers to health and well-being their patients face. Health centers have their roots in the Civil Rights Movement.
The visionary community activists and reform-minded physicians who founded the earliest health centers believed that we could fight poverty and empower communities with health and opportunity. Today health equity remains a top priority for our country. Health centers improve the health and well-being of underserved communities while empowering people to become actively involved in solving issues unique to their needs and communities.
Health centers are innovators, healers and problem solvers that reach beyond the walls of the conventional health care delivery system to prevent illness and address the social drivers that may cause poor health - diet, nutrition, mental illness, or homelessness. Health centers work in partnership with health care payers, entire health care systems, the private sector, and the government on all levels to address and respond to the critical public health crises of our time.
To learn more about what health centers do and get involved in the Health Center Movement, visit the NACHC website: www.nachc.org/
To see a health center timeline and more about the history, visit the Chronicles website: www.chcchronicles.org/