Community Health Centers

In this book, available through the "Critical Issues in Health and Medicine" series of Rutgers University Press, the author, Bonnie Lefkowitz, tells the story of an approach to medicine in the United States that focuses on the wellness of whole neighbourhoods. Since their creation during the 1960s, community health centres have served the needs of the economically poor in diverse communities, such as the tenements of New York, the colonias of Texas, the working class neighbourhoods of Boston, and the disenfranchised areas of the rural South.

As Lefkowitz explains here, civil rights activists who had observed first-hand the principles of community-oriented primary care in South African townships and a rural tribal reserve called Pholela developed the first centres. They added a focus on empowerment and got support from the federal government’s War on Poverty for one centre in the rural Mississippi Delta and another in a Boston housing project. The early centres provided not only primary and preventive care, but also social and environmental services, economic development, and job training and education.

The author explores, from a point of personal involvement, the programme's transformation from a small demonstration effort to a network of nearly a thousand modern health care organisations serving nearly 15 million people. Through a series of personal accounts and interviews with national leaders and health care workers, patients, and activists in five communities across the United States, Lefkowitz shows how health centres have endured despite difficulties, including political change and discrimination.

According to the publisher, the book offers an analysis of failures and successes, and offers ideas on how to ensure the survival of the centres' community-based mission, at a time when there is bipartisan support for expansion of the programme.

Available for purchase through the Rutgers University Press website.

Click here to download the preface and chapter one of this book in PDF format.