While the new year is well underway, I wanted to take one last opportunity to highlight the incredible work our Kennedy Community Health staff has done to ensure members of our communities live healthier lives.

Those of you who know me know I love numbers, particularly when they tell powerful stories.

2022 marked Kennedy Community Health’s 50th anniversary and I couldn’t be more grateful to those who made that milestone possible. When Kennedy Community Health was founded in 1972 as the Great Brook Valley Health Center, our seven Founding Mothers were determined to break the status quo and provide care to a population that had been too often overlooked by the area’s healthcare delivery system. 

Fifty years later, I am proud to say that Kennedy Community Health continues to provide care to all who walk through our doors, regardless of age, race, religious beliefs, immigration or coverage status. 

In 2022, we saw 31,120 patients, the largest number served in our history. That on its own is a soaring achievement. But then, when we dig deeper, we find that our teams provided care in 85 languages across our three medical facilities. Among these individuals were 280 refugees from countries across the world, brought to us through our Refugee Health Assessment Program, one of only ten in the Commonwealth. 

Kennedy Community Health increased its standing as a leader in LGBTQIA+ health care equality and now sees 163 patients by our transgender care team, providing these individuals with gender affirming hormone therapy and comprehensive health care and social services. This number has almost doubled since the team’s creation two years ago and we look forward to continuing to provide gender affirming care to all who need it.

As part of Kennedy Community Health’s comprehensive model of care, patients may have their prescriptions filled at our health centers and we processed 137,307 prescriptions over the last year.  We also distributed 2,708 glasses through our Optometry programs.

Our insurance navigation services and community health workers partner with patients and medical providers to advance our goal of excellent health outcomes for all, as we recognize that health is affected by a variety of outside factors. Our team of Navigators completed 2,370 insurance applications, 1,546 insurance renewals and provided 14,277 assists with health insurance needs.

These numbers should make us proud. Prouder still because behind them are happy, healthier patients who are even more dedicated to this, their community health center. 

We want to thank our patients and our community who understand the value of quality health care and we look forward to the future as we continue to help all people live healthier lives.

Yours in health,

Stephen J. Kerrigan, President and CEO

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I’m writing today to update you, our patients, supporters and dedicated staff about some recent and unnerving events that may appear to threaten community-based health care in Greater Worcester. We at Kennedy Community Health are acutely aware of how recent headlines and news reports have evoked a sense of uncertainty in community health, so we want to update you on our Health Center in a clear and concise manner and be available to answer any questions you, our most important audiences, have.

Kennedy Community Health is strong, structurally and financially, and is expanding access to health care in Central Massachusetts with two new sites in Worcester and Milford opening early 2023. Our growing team remains committed to putting the health and wellbeing of patients first and we will continue to provide exemplary care to all who come through our doors, whether they have been coming to our facilities for generations or are just starting today.

We understand that this is a challenging time for members of our community and want to reassure you that we have and are continuing to offer support to those who need it most. We have been in steady and constant contact with Family Health Center of Worcester before and through their recent financial challenges. We will continue to work with them to ensure they can stay a strong and vibrant organization providing community-based health care for years to come. While the leadership of Family Health continues to consider various options to secure their future, Kennedy Community Health will remain positioned to ensure the public health of this region remains strong and be ready to assist them further should they be open to our plan.

Community health centers have been a cornerstone of care since their creation in 1965 and are essential partners in our community, particularly for our most vulnerable populations. The pandemic has shown us more than any time in recent history the power of strong, local, accessible and affordable health care for anyone who needs it. We look out for the families we serve and work to address the social determinants of health that impact them so fundamentally.

Kennedy Community Health is grateful for our providers and staff, for their dedication to serving the members of our community. We look forward to continuing to ensure our patients live healthier lives as we continue moving our core mission forward for generations to come.

Thank you for your support,

Stephen J. Kerrigan, President and CEO

Cries for equality and justice, for rights and opportunities have been with us for far too long.  Five decades ago, in the 1970s, the Civil Rights Movement was dominating the headlines.  People on the streets demanded health care now.  Born from those demands, the community health center movement emerged.  Health centers not only provided access to needed care, but they were also a vehicle for economic growth and development in neighborhoods that needed it the most.

In Great Brook Valley, the largest public housing complex in Central MA, seven mothers came together with the same goal in mind: better access to high-quality, comprehensive and preventative care for their families.  At the time, residents faced tremendous barriers.  In some instances, it could take hours and many bus lines just to get to the emergency room.  Some patients took multiple buses with broken bones, bleeding wounds or worse.  A report from 1971 described such a situation.

One woman in her twenties brought her six-year-old daughter to a hospital with an injured arm, requesting an x-ray. The staff put a bandage on her and sent her home, but the pain persisted. At a second hospital, the child was diagnosed with a broken arm. The same mother’s eight-year-old received stitches in her leg that burst open once they reached home. Her one-and-a-half-year-old son was diagnosed with a bad asthma attack and given medication for it. A second opinion found the true problem, a collapsed lung.

On August 22, 1972, everything changed.  Fed up with the status quo, those seven brave mothers, our Founding Mothers, from Great Brook Valley came together to bring care to the housing complex.  The mothers enlisted the help of community leader, Charles Estus, and formed a Health Committee to demonstrate need in the neighborhood.  They negotiated for one nurse practitioner to provide care in one room in one apartment, thereby founding the Great Brook Valley Health Center.  And on this day in 1972, the Health Center was incorporated.

We know the story from there: one room became five, five became a whole building, and so on until today, 50 years later, Kennedy Community Health proudly serves over 29,000 individuals through 11 sites across Central Mass and MetroWest.  These sites, staffed by over 450 members of the communities we serve, provide access to high-quality, comprehensive and inclusive care to anyone who walks through our doors.

Standing on the shoulders of our seven founding mothers, we’re forging ahead with not one, but two expansions, in both Worcester and Milford.  The story does not end here. 

We continue to carry forth the mission and vision of those seven trailblazers each and every day.  We find new opportunities.  We dream bigger, we have a greater impact, and we bring more services to more people across the Commonwealth.  Every day, we help people live healthier lives but in the words of our namesake, Senator Kennedy, the work goes on.

Yours in health,

Stephen J. Kerrigan

It’s a time of significant change in Massachusetts as, for the first time in nearly a decade, there are open races for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General and State Auditor. Add to that a contested race for Secretary of State and many of the seats in the 200-person state Legislature and we have a ripe time for big ideas at a critical time in our Commonwealth’s history just as we start to think about what’s best and what’s possible in a post-pandemic world.

As community health leaders throughout the Commonwealth, we wanted to make sure the issues we lay out here are a part of the conversations happening in living rooms, backyard barbecues, on social media and across the airwaves as you, the leaders running for these offices, chart the course forward for Massachusetts.

We run Community Health Centers in Massachusetts and, combined, serve more than one million Bay Staters each year. We provide access to high quality care to patients across the Commonwealth, but we are so much more than that. 

We are a critical component of the health care delivery system across the board. And we don’t just mean because we provide everything from primary medical care to dental, behavioral health, optometry, pharmaceutical and nutrition care, but because of the critical cog we are in the wheel of healthcare in the United States.

You see, we care for all individuals regardless of their ability to pay. Many of our patients are at, or below, the poverty level and are in at risk populations. Some health centers have as many as 30 percent of their patients without any insurance at all. But we see them anyway because that’s our job.  Often, we are the only thing that stands between our patients and using the emergency room for primary care.

So imagine for a second that we were in March of 2020 and there were no community health centers and the COVID-19 pandemic hit. What would have happened? The million Massachusetts residents who went to our health centers would have been clogging the emergency rooms (ER) across the state at a time when we needed the exact opposite. Eventually they would have been coming in just for wellness checks or common illnesses. Or they wouldn’t, which would then lead to two years’ worth of delayed health checks and illnesses left unaddressed. Without us, the system would have ground to a halt under the weight of the nearly 15 percent increase of ER patients.  

Going into March of 2020, we, as health care providers, believed that this could be the finest hour for community health centers. We were right.  

For almost two years now, local and state leaders and every health care organization and provider have been singularly focused on fighting COVID-19. The virus has monopolized every conversation and resource across the Commonwealth. In fact, everyone can’t wait to “get back to normal.” But what about coming out of this BETTER than normal? By focusing on the right investments — that’s exactly what we have the opportunity to do.

Community health centers aren’t just about health care delivery, they are about looking out for the families we serve and working to address the social determinants of health that impact them so fundamentally.

A person with a job is a healthier person.

A person with housing stability is a healthier person.

A person with the benefit of education or training is generally a healthier person.

A person with access to food security and a clean environment is a healthier person.

A person with transportation to a job, school, a grocery store, or even a health center, is a healthier person.

We need you to be a leader for the whole of the Commonwealth and for the common wealth. If we care for those most in need the benefits are immeasurable, not just in their growth and success but in unseen benefits for us as a society. All community health centers seek to do is help make a more perfect union for us all.

So we need you to focus on this:

Give everyone access to a good education. This means from birth through their lives. There are many ways to get there, but don’t let the fight get in the way of the right that people have in this Commonwealth to a good education.  

Provide access to housing. Build a strong homeless shelter structure that doesn’t separate people from families or jobs to live in motels in food deserts. Increase vouchers for rental assistance, add to the affordable housing stock and give communities better incentives to build more rather than fight any. Create market rate housing, more favorable home ownership programs and tax incentives for people looking to purchase their first home or age gracefully in their last one.  

Expand educational loan repayment opportunities. A strong education system with loan repayment opportunities to incentivize staying in our Commonwealth will create more dependability in the workforce. We need manufacturers of clean energy products as much as we need the research scientists. We need to build up vocational technical opportunities to create the jobs that our economy needs in the next decade.   

Increase food security, now. People should not be starving in Massachusetts and far too many, including an estimated 1 in every 11 children, experience hunger every day. We need a moonshot approach to eliminating food insecurity in the Commonwealth.  

True health care for all. We must continue to find new and creative ways to increase access to care for our neighbors, family, friends, colleagues and complete strangers, regardless of their ability to pay. And we need a health care system that covers the TOTAL cost of care and doesn’t force people to choose between paying their bills and maintaining their health. 

The support of the federal, state and local elected and appointed officials played a big role in our survival during this pandemic.  The current administration and state lawmakers have enacted historic rate increases for community health centers. Along with recent investments in the health center workforce, and support from the federal government, the Commonwealth has realized that a network of strong, efficient, and effective community health centers is a cornerstone of Massachusetts’ future.  But if we don’t take this once in a lifetime chance at seismic systemic change NOW then what did it all mean?

Be a leader for the common wealth and you will be a great leader for Massachusetts.

Sincerely, 

Stephen J. Kerrigan, President & CEO, Kennedy Community Health Center (Worcester, Framingham, Milford)