Bridgeport Community Health Center Gets $290,000 Federal Grant
By Huijuan Jia
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2004- The Bridgeport Community Health Center last week was awarded a $290,000 federal grant as part of a national program to help communities across the country provide comprehensive health care for low-income and uninsured Americans.
The center’s chief executive officer, Ludwig Spinelli, called the federal grant “a perfect fit to address the health needs of homeless persons.”
By combining aggressive street outreach with an integrated system of primary care-which includes mental health and substance abuse counseling, client advocacy and referrals for oral care-services are made available at no charge at locations accessible to the homeless population, Spinelli said in a press release.
The center, founded in 1976, is one of only two community health centers servicing the Bridgeport. It provides health care to about 27,000 people at six sites in Fairfield County, serving a medically underserved target area.
“We are working to double the number of community-based healthcare clinics across the nation, providing 20 million uninsured Americans with health care,” Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said in a press release Wednesday, “I am grateful that Bridgeport, my hometown, will be a beneficiary of that expansion.”
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.”
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