Health centers have become adept at responding to natural disasters and other trauma events since their response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the last year alone, health centers have been at the forefront providing primary care services in the wake of multiple hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. In a new report, Medical Surge and the …
Author: Erica Addison
Responding to a One-Two Punch – USVI One Year After Hurricanes Irma and Maria
The 2017 hurricane season was one of the most devastating in recent history. Hurricane Maria struck the Caribbean just weeks after Hurricane Irma had already devastated many of the same islands. Homes were leveled, power grids were destroyed, and thousands of people were displaced. Area health centers set plans in place so that they could …
Honoring Health Center Heroes
We all know that it takes more than a village to care for the 28 million patients who rely on a health center for their care. It takes a multitude of dedicated health care heroes. In fact, more than 224,000 people work at health centers, including care coordinators, clinicians, community health workers, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, …
What Makes a Health Center Hero?
The theme of this year’s National Health Center Week, “Celebrating Health Centers: Home of America’s Health Care Heroes,” has got us thinking about all of the ways health centers and their staff go above and beyond to treat the more than 27 million patients they see each year. Did you know that health centers have …
Celebrating National Children’s Dental Health Month
February is National Children’s Dental Health Month, a month-long observance to bring awareness to the importance of oral health for children and adults. When Janelle Jehn was a dental therapy student at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, her instructors strongly encouraged the class to serve pediatric patients in the community where the need was …
Fighting Food Insecurity: Hunger as a Health Problem
More than 50 years ago, Dr. H. Jack Geiger, a co-founder of the Community Health Center Movement, helped create a food co-op program in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Part of his mission was to ensure people would both have access to food and be invested in their own food security. Despite this early effort, food insecurity – difficulty …
California Health Center Dispatches Mobile Medical Units in Aftermath of Hurricane Harvey
Health centers are used to lending a helping hand – both as a source of primary health care to people in their communities and wherever else they’re needed in times of emergency. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Clinica Sierra Vista (CSV), in Bakersfield, CA, stayed true to that mission. The health center dispatched two 44-foot-long …
Health Centers Have a Secret Weapon for Addressing Minority Health: Consumer Boards
National Minority Health Month 2017 is behind us but we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out one particularly unique way Community Health Centers address minority health — through consumer-driven boards. By law, health center boards must be comprised of at least 51% consumers. These are people who live in the community served by the health …
Wanted: Young Professional Health Center Leaders
If you’ve been to any NACHC events in recent years, you’ve probably heard leadership talk about the importance of training the next generation of health center leaders. I’m still fairly new here, but I know I have. This year, with the introduction of the new Young Professional Leadership Exchange (YP) track at the 2016 Community …
Postcard from Rhode Island — A Community Approach to Target Victims of Domestic Violence
Every so often we hear about health centers collaborating with other organizations to solve a problem. In a previous blog post we wrote about efforts by health centers and Boston to respond to victims of trauma. Now, in Rhode Island, we learned about a similar collaboration, only this time it is to reach out to victims of domestic violence. Thanks to a …