Community Health Centers: A Movement and the People Who Made It Happen

by Bonnie Lefkowitz

Overview

America has set ambitious goals for improving health, but they are doomed to failure unless we address persistent and in some cases widening disparities by income and race. This book tells the story of one groundbreaking approach that attacks the problem by focusing on the wellness of whole neighborhoods. Since their creation during the 1960s, community health centers have served the needs of the poor in the tenements of New York, the colonias of Texas, the working-class neighborhoods of Boston, and the dirt farms of the South. As products of the civil rights movement, the early centers provided not only primary and preventive care, but also social services, economic development, and empowerment. Bonnie Lefkowitz explores the program's unlikely transformation from a small and beleaguered demonstration effort to a network of close to a thousand modern health care organizations serving nearly 15 million people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813541310
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	01/09/2007
Series:	Critical Issues in Health and Medicine
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	471 KB

About the Author

Bonnie Lefkowitz is a health policy writer and consultant with twenty-four years of experience as a federal researcher, administrator, and policy analyst. She lives in North Beach, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Preface     vii
Acknowledgments     xi
Heroes of Community Health     1
Mississippi: Where It All Began     29
Boston: The Way Democracy Ought to Work     50
The South Carolina Low Country: A Homegrown Black Power Structure     75
New York: Health Care Is a Right     91
The Rio Grande Valley of Texas: Steps from the Third World     116
The Health Center Legacy     135
Notes     151
Interviews     163
Index     167

Editorial Reviews

This lyrical book offers an intimate view of the role of community leadership in the creation of health centers, one of the most important chapters in the history of U.S. health policy for the medically underserved. Bonnie Lefkowitz's examination of health centers and community leadership should be required reading in public health leadership programs everywhere.

Hirsh Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy, George Washington Univer - Sara Rosenbaum

This lyrical book offers an intimate view of the role of community leadership in the creation of health centers, one of the most important chapters in the history of U.S. health policy for the medically underserved. Bonnie Lefkowitz's examination of health centers and community leadership should be required reading in public health leadership programs everywhere.--Sara Rosenbaum, J.D. "Hirsh Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy, George Washington Univer"

From the Publisher