By: Beau Boughamer

Our friends at Florida Community Health Centers Inc. let us know about next Thursday’s scheduled groundbreaking for what will become the Dr. Fred Brown Children’s Health Center in Okeechobee County.

FCHC is using $1.6 million in federal stimulus money to jump-start the $3.5 million project.

From FCHC’s news release:

The new pediatrics and dental center is scheduled to open Fall 2010.  This Center will be appropriately named the Dr. Fred Brown Children’s Health Center, in recognition of the care and commitment of Dr. Fred Brown who has been caring for generations of Okeechobee families for nearly 30 years. 

“Florida Community Health Center (FCHC) is to be applauded for the decades of medical and dental care it has provided Okeechobee residents. In addition, to providing outstanding health care, FCHC has educated and trained so many health professional students. Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine has graduated many physicians who received outstanding educational training at the FCHC Okeechobee centers. Today they are practicing physicians. Many thanks are extended to FCHC’s dedicated, highly professional staff,” said Dr. James Howell, Department of Rural Medicine Chair at Nova Southeastern University and Florida’s first Secretary of Health.