Our world is a different place now. The COVID-19 pandemic is shutting down normal life as we knew it and Community Health Centers turn their attention to the business of saving lives. We know that everyday heroics won’t be enough. Even so, we acknowledge their courage on the front lines, the difficult choices they are …
Author: Amy Simmons Farber
Making the Case for Primary Care Access:”What We Lack is a Strong Signal from Congress”
Greg Nycz, Executive Director of Family Health Center of Marshfield, has devoted his nearly 50-year career to ensuring that people in Wisconsin have access to decent health care, especially vulnerable rural populations who, by his own description, will face growing barriers to accessing the health services they need for optimal health. This week he was …
Update on Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19
(Updated March 1, 2020) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is aggressively responding to the global outbreak of the novel corona virus, also known as COVID-19, which has been detected in 60 locations internationally, including the United States. NACHC hosting a webinar, “Prepare Not Panic: COVID-19 CDC Update and the Health Center Response” …
Cervical Cancer Awareness Month
As the month of January comes to a close, we’re thinking about women’s health and the value of preventive screenings and vaccinations. Nearly 13,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, but the disease is preventable with vaccination and a Pap smear screening. According to the most recent data available …
What We Know About the New Coronavirus
UPDATED (1/20/2020)_: The World Health Organization has declared the coronavirus outbreak in China a public health emergency of international concern. NACHC is closely monitoring developments and reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) related to the outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus (termed “2019-nCoV”) that was first detected …
A Miracle in Missouri
In the “Show Me State” of Missouri, a Community Health Center in the city of St. Joseph showed everyone just how to pull off a miracle. With just $42,000 in their budget, and more than just a few skeptics who said there wasn’t enough money or time, the determined staff at Northwest Health Services opened a …
More Children are Uninsured
The fresh start of a new decade brings renewed interest in the growing numbers of uninsured children in our nation. Four million children are now uninsured, an increase of than 400,000 between 2016 and 2018, according to the U.S. Census. The new numbers point to a new downward trend after a trajectory of coverage among …
2019: Leaving Us Certain about Uncertainty
We turn the page on 2019 and plunge ahead to 2020 with a lot of unfinished work. A key task left unfinished as we approach a new decade is long-term and stable funding for Community Health Centers, now operating under a temporary measure through May 22nd. Even so, health centers are no less supported; indeed, …
It’s National Rural Health Day
There are still plenty of places in the U.S. where it’s easier to purchase a round bale of hay than health care. Approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population—about 60 million people—live in rural areas, which make up 97 percent of the land area in the United States, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. That’s …
Faces of the Movement: From Health Center Patient to Health Center Physician
When Toni Zink declared that God told her she was going to be a doctor one day her mother had every reason to be skeptical. Her daughter was only 4 years old. But then again, Toni Zink was a determined young lady who never let something as inconsequential as youth get in the way of …