The enactment of comprehensive health reform will bring about important changes to the health insurance and health care delivery systems. Community health centers will play a role in implementing many health reform provisions and in providing access to care for millions of Americans who will gain health insurance coverage under the law. To meet this new demand for services, particularly in unde...

BACKGROUND Vietnam has achieved great improvements in maternal healthcare outcomes, but there is evidence of increasing inequity. Disadvantaged groups, predominantly ethnic minorities and people living in remote mountainous areas, do not gain access to maternal health improvements despite targeted efforts from policymakers. OBJECTIVE This study identifies underlying structural barriers to equ...

Background: Incarceration rates for people with serious mental illnesses are higher than the general population. However, research has been limited in regards to patterns of incarcerations for patients treated in public mental health settings. This study examines differences in lifetime imprisonment rates among patients of a U.S. urban Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) and national samples,...

Initial enthusiasm about community mental health centers (CMHCs) has diminished. The participation of psychiatrists in CMHCs declined in the 1970s and may decline further. The author describes one center to highlight problems encountered by community psychiatrists: 1) unrealistic treatment expectations, 2) limitations of psychiatric knowledge, 3) need for a broad range of clinical expertise, 4)...

This paper uses the rollout of the first Community Health Centers (CHCs) to study the longer-term health effects of increasing access to primary care. Within ten years, CHCs are associated with a reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates of 2 percent among those 50 and older. The implied 7 to 13 percent decrease in one-year mortality risk among beneficiaries amounts to 20 to 40 percent of the 1...

What is attempted in this article is to present an organizational perspective on community mental health centers (CMHCs) that could provide a clearer understanding of the structures and processes observed in them. The perspective is derived from a broader application of organizational theory to human service organizations. It is based on the assumption that human service organizations are a dis...

This study examined access to care for uninsured and Medicaid-insured community health center patients in comparison to nonhealth center patients nationally. Using nationally representative data from 2 major surveys in 2002, there was a positive association between seeking care in community health centers and self-reported access to care for both uninsured and Medicaid patients. This suggests t...

BACKGROUND HPV vaccination is universally recommended for boys and girls, yet vaccination rates remain low nationwide. METHODS We conducted a provider-focused intervention that included repeated contacts, education, individualized feedback, and strong quality improvement incentives to raise HPV vaccination rates at two federally qualified community health centers. To estimate the effectivenes...

BACKGROUND Refugees experience multiple health and social needs. This requires an integrated approach to care in the countries of resettlement, including Canada. Perhaps, interactive eHealth tools could build bridges between medical and social care in a timely manner. The authors developed and piloted a multi-risk Computer-assisted Psychosocial Risk Assessment (CaPRA) tool for Afghan refugees v...

OBJECTIVE We examined the use of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies among Chinese and Vietnamese Americans who had limited proficiency with the English language and explore the association between patient-clinician discussions about CAM therapy use and patient assessments of quality of care. METHODS We surveyed Chinese and Vietnamese Americans who visited 11 community healt...