In the Beginning: Launching a Movement
Community health centers have a rich history, particularly in Massachusetts where the first health center in the nation was launched in 1965. Following is a comprehensive history of community health centers up through the present.
Physician-activists H. Jack Geiger and Count D. Gibson Jr. helped launch the American Community Health Center Movement forty years ago with their founding of the first two community health centers in the nation: one in the Columbia Point section of Dorchester, and the other in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Despite four decades of political, social and economic challenges, community health centers have remained committed to their mission of providing accessible, affordable and high-quality health care for all, growing from a two-site demonstration project to what is now the largest unified primary care network in the United States.
