Avis Goodwin Community Health Center Gets $375,000 Federal Grant
By Huijuan Jia
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2004-Avis Goodwin Community Health Center in Dover and Rochester last week was awarded a $375,000 federal grant as part of a national program to help communities across the country provide comprehensive health care for low-income and uninsured Americans.
“This is a significant achievement for the entire organization and assists in ensuring that we will continue to provide quality health care for a diverse population in our community for a long time to come,” the center’s chief executive officer, Frank Ramirez, said in a press release.
This is the first time in the health center’s 32-year history that it will receive federal funding, Ramirez said. Avis Goodwin is the only agency to be awarded the grant out of eight competing community health centers in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The center, founded in 1971 and first known as The Clinic, changed its name in 1996 to honor its founders. The Dover facility provides primary health care services and in August a dental care facility opened in Rochester
The grant provides $225,000 for expansion of the center’s services to serve additional patients. The remaining $150,000 is to be applied toward a capital campaign fund designated for the construction of a new consolidated facility, according to the press release.
Ramirez said the center has just started a fundraising campaign for the new facility, which will be in Somersworth. The campaign is expected to raise more than $1 million, mainly from businesses and organizations. By the time of its completion, expected in two or three years, the 25,000-square-foot new health center will consolidate the Dover and Rochester facilities to provide both primary and dental services.
As a federally qualified health center, Avis Goodwin also will be eligible for other federal grants to help enhance existing services and to develop new services, the press release said.
The grant will enable Avis Goodwin, which annually serves more than 6,000 users who visit the centers 25,000 times a year, to bring in 1,700 new patients each year and to serve about 11,000 people by 2006 or 2007, Ramirez said.
Half of the persons using the facilities do not have medical insurance coverage, he said. There are 14,000 uninsured people in Strafford County, according to Ramirez.
The grant is part of a five-year U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plan launched in 2002 to add 1,200 new and expanded community health center sites nationwide and increase the number of people served annually from 10 million to 16 million by 2006. The program has funded nearly 700 new or expanded health centers. Almost 40 percent of the patients treated at these health centers have no insurance coverage, and others have inadequate coverage, according to the department.
The grants, totaling $49 million, will help 76 health centers provide services to an estimated 488,000 Americans, including many without health insurance. The grants will be made in December contingent upon the availability of fiscal year 2005 funds.
“Nearly half a million Americans, who otherwise would have gone without health care, will soon have access to health care services in their community,” HHS Secretary Tommy G.. Thompson said in a press release, “These grants are all about bringing health care to the people who need it most, in the areas where it’s needed most.”
###
