MN Community Health Centers provide high-quality, affordable, comprehensive primary and preventive health care for our medically underserved communities.
(Minneapolis, MN) — August 9, 2023 — For over 50 years, MN Community Health Centers (“MN Health Center”) have provided high-quality, affordable, comprehensive primary and preventive health care in our State’s medically underserved communities, delivering value to, and having a significant impact on the Minnesota Health care system. As part of the country’s largest primary care network, MN Health Centers are a critical element of the State’s health system serving over 180,000 Minnesotans in rural, suburban, frontier, and urban areas – and often providing the only accessible and dependable source of primary care in their communities.
MN Health Centers are beacons of essential resources and support in the face of disasters and pandemics and will continue to respond quickly to care for Minnesota’s most vulnerable and underserved communities. MN Community Health Centers have administered nearly 280,000 COVID-19 vaccines to approximately 95,000 unique individuals..
Every day, MN Health Centers develop new approaches to integrating a wide range of services beyond primary care, including oral health, vision, behavioral health, and pharmacy services, to meet the needs and challenges of our communities. MN Health centers have more than doubled their behavioral health workforce in the last decade to meet the growing need for behavioral health services.
MN Community Health Centers are governed by patient-majority boards, ensuring that patients are engaged in their own health care decisions. MN Community Health Centers are locally owned and operated small businesses that serve as critical economic engines, generating $327 million in economic activity in some of the country’s most economically distressed communities.
Community Health Centers nationally support more than 500,000 direct and indirect jobs, and in MN nearly 2,000 employees – including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, licensed family therapists, and certified nurse-midwives – work as part of multi-disciplinary clinical teams designed to treat patients’ health and wellbeing.
The MN Health Center model continues to prove an effective means of overcoming barriers to healthcare access – including geography, income, and insurance status – while improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare system and costs of care by helping manage patients’ chronic conditions, which keeps them out of more expensive healthcare settings like hospital emergency rooms.
This National Health Center Week, we celebrate Minnesota’s 17 organizations with over 82 delivery sites, including over 20 schools. We honor their dedicated staff, board members, patients, and all those responsible for their continued success and growth since the first health centers opened their doors more than 50 years ago. We celebrate the legacy of Health Centers, and their vital role in shaping the past, present, and future of our State’s health care system.
About the Minnesota Association of Community Health Centers:
Established in 1996, the Minnesota Association of Community Health Centers (MNACHC) serves as the leading State-wide voice for Minnoesota’s Health Centers and as an advocate for health care access for the medically underserved and uninsured across the state.
