Health Center Program
Health Centers are community-based and patient-directed organizations that serve people with limited access to health care. These include low-income patients, the uninsured, those with limited English proficiency, migrant and seasonal farmworkers, individuals and families experiencing homelessness, and those living in public housing.
HRSA-supported clinics provide comprehensive, culturally competent, quality primary health care to a broadly diverse patient base that includes increasing numbers of veterans.
Services include pharmacy, mental health, substance abuse and oral health treatment, as well as supportive services (education, translation, transportation and case management) that promote access to health care and ensure patient well-being.
Health centers are required to be located in or serve a high-need community (a “medically underserved” area or population) — and to make their services available to all patients on a sliding scale, with fees based on ability to pay. By law, health centers must be governed by community boards with majority patient representation.
Looking at national numbers, Health Centers serve:
• 1 in 20 individuals
• 1 in 12 African-Americans
• 1 in 9 Hispanic/Latinos
• 1 in 8 uninsured
• 1 in 7 individuals living below 200 percent of the Federal poverty level
• 1 in 4 homeless individuals and migrant/seasonal farmworkers
Read more about this topic: Bureau Of Primary Health Care
Famous quotes containing the words health, center and/or program:
“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The question of whether it’s God’s green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Oh Death he is a little man,
And he goes from do’ to do’ ...”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)