Community Health Center week

Monterey, VA – This is National Community Health Center week, and Highland Medical Center in Monterey is celebrating, along with a thousand other centers around the country.

“It’s a good thing to celebrate community health centers,” says the Center’s Executive Director, Polly Newlan, “because I think where we do have them, people forget why they’re there and how they came to be.”

The Center has goals left to accomplish. For example, they’ve been searching for a full-time dentist for the past year. They provide family practice, adult internal medicine, well child visits, and x-ray services in collaboration with the University of Virginia.

Federally-funded community health centers have been serving communities since the 1960s, established as part of the war on poverty. Run by boards of directors, these centers are essentially governed by the people and for the people.