Community health centers: a movement and the people who made it happen

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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. Bonnie Lefkowitz is a health policy writer and consultant with twent-four years of experience as a federal researcher, administrator, and policy analyst.