Celebrating 51 years of caring for the underserved

Fifty-one years ago, as the civil rights movement and President Johnson’s War on Poverty began to change America, the Community Health Center (CHC) movement was born. Led by a group of community health and civil rights activists, the movement grew out of an idealistic notion that they could make a huge difference by providing the medically underserved with access to quality health care.

In 1965, the nation’s first Community Health Centers opened in medically underserved inner city and rural areas as part of the president’s Office of Economic Opportunity. Originally called “Neighborhood Health Centers,” the first ones were located in Boston and Mississippi. They were soon followed by other community-based neighborhood clinics in underserved areas around the country, including Colorado.

In 1980, three Denver community health pioneers began meeting informally to discuss how to bring the Community Health Center movement to Colorado. Stephanie Thomas at Denver General Hospital, Jerry Brasher at Salud Family Health Center in Fort Lupton, and migrant health leader Chuck Stout, were soon joined by Mike Bloom, director of Valley-Wide Health Services. In 1982, they officially formed a new primary care association, a statewide network of all Colorado Community Health Centers, called the Colorado Community Health Network.

Today, 50 years after the first Community Health Centers were established, the Community Health Center story in Colorado is still being written. Colorado’s 20 Community Health Centers now provide a health care home for more than one in eight Coloradans, including 197,000 children, 25% of Colorado’s Medicaid enrollees, and 25% of Colorado’s CHP+ enrollees. The movement’s success is proof that the vision of those 1960’s activists was right on the mark. We can change lives and build healthier communities by providing medically underserved populations with access to health care. Colorado Community Health Centers are the future of how health care is delivered and received.
For more information on the history of the Colorado Community Health Center Movement, click here.For more information on the history of National Community Health Center Movement, visit http://nachc.org/about-our-health-centers/.