The Great Brook Valley Neighborhood Health Center in Worcester changed names this Thursday, becoming the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center, a tribute to Ted Kennedy’s role in bringing Community Health Centers into being. Seems like a good time to review the history and role of a neighborhood health center.

Technically, a Federally Qualified Health Center is a community based organization which provides comprehensive primary and preventive care to a community, regardless of their ability to pay. They are generally governed by a locally based board of directors, and one of the unique features of the governance structure is that 51% (or more) of the board members must represent the population of the community (and generally receive their care there). Health care reform funding is expected to modernize existing centers, and significantly expand the network of centers nationwide.

Since health centers are a much cheaper way of providing health care, this can help save money for the health system overall, especially the parts of the system paid for by tax money. At the same time, people served at these health centers will generally be healthier, because the same research shows that the reason people who receive care at health centers have lower costs is because “providing quality primary care services can reduce the need for other ambulatory and hospital-based medical care, thereby lowering overall medical costs”.

Unfortunately, neighborhood or community health centers still carry the stigma of being places where poor people get their care-not a place you’d like to go if you had the chance to get out. People have a love/hate relationship with them-sort of like coming from a bad neighborhood that you still love, because it’s home. The stigma is in some sense justified-most of the people (70%) who get their care at neighborhood health centers are living in poverty by the federal definition. This is another way of saying, though, that they do one of the toughest jobs in health better than any other model of care delivery, for less money.

The facts suggest that we’d be served a lot better, most of us, if we got our primary care through a place which used the community health center model. Health care is almost never just about medicine, because so many other things impact your health. If your house is being foreclosed, it affects your health. If you’re having trouble handling your teenager, that affects your health. If your neighborhood is in the middle of an epidemic of flu, or norovirus, that affects your health. If your drinking is out of control, that affects your health. None of these problems are directly the responsibility of your doctor, but wouldn’t it be nice if, when you went to see her about them, she had the resources to work on the whole problem or set of problems, rather than just bandaiding over your symptoms?

That is what neighborhood health centers are designed to do; treat the whole person, in their family unit, in their community. And whatever you think of Ted Kennedy, I think that’s evidence of solid service to the nation.