Born out of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty of the 1960s, community health centers respond to the health needs of the community. One of the first community health centers in the country, Tufts Delta Health Center, was founded in Bolivar Mississippi in 1965 to address the unmet health needs of African American sharecroppers. We intentionally joined this important legacy and history of service when we became a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in 2013.

St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers was founded in the late-1980s as the Community Outreach Department of St. Jude Medical Center, an acute care hospital located in Fullerton, California. During this time, Proposition 187 denied public services to immigrants living in California without legal status. Soon after, our community experienced an increased need from the number of patients showing up to give birth and who had gone without prenatal care. To address the issue, St. Jude Medical Center purchased a mobile clinic and hired caregivers to go out into the community to provide care. This effort aligned with the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, the foundresses of St. Jude Medical Center, who have a long history of going out into communities to assess and tend to the community’s needs.

In the years following, St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers continued to expand services in response to neighborhood needs. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, we added pediatric and adult mobile health clinics, dental care and behavioral health services while also moving into fixed site clinic health centers, thanks to community partnerships.

In an effort to become more sustainable, we formed a non-profit corporation separate from, but formally affiliated with St. Jude Medical Center in 2011, and the hospital transferred the clinic assets and operations to the corporation in 2012.

In 2013, St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers applied for and received designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center, enabling further growth and expanded community partnerships. By mission and design, our faith based centers exist to serve those who have limited access to healthcare, low-income individuals, uninsured, underinsured, although all are welcome.

Providence St. Joseph Hospital of Orange transferred their community clinics, La Amistad and Puente La Salud to the operation of St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers. Both organizations recognized combining health centers that had a similar history and a shared mission to serve and expand our work and services in Orange County. That same year, we began operating at Topaz Elementary School Clinic, in partnership with the Placentia Yorba Linda School District. Informed and grounded in these two social justice legacies, St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers has continued to grow our services and sites, expanding dental, pediatric, mental health, and supportive services to our growing list of existing services.

Providence St. Mary Medical Center from Apple Valley in California, formally affiliated with and transferred ownership of three community clinics, plus mobile clinics, to serve San Bernardino County’s High Desert community in August 2020. These clinics were historically focused on midwifery care, delivering high-quality prenatal care for the High Desert community, but then expanded into primary care a few years prior to joining St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers.

December 2021 brought the opening of our health center at Ponderosa Park in Anaheim. The clinic is the result of a strategic partnership between the City of Anaheim, Providence St. Jude Medical Center, and St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers. The City of Anaheim provides a long-term lease for land in Ponderosa Park, upon which the clinic was constructed. Funds to construct the new health center were provided through a grant from St. Jude Medical Center and generous donors to the St. Jude Care for the Poor Fund.

St. Jude Neighborhood Health Centers’ Board of Directors and caregivers are continually working to grow and improve access to and delivery of services. As we go forward, we are committed to providing humble, high quality, and affordable care and support services to the vulnerable in our community. Our response to systematic anti-immigrant sentiment and racism is to provide a warm welcome to all, exceptional patient care services, and strive to create a culture of inclusiveness and humility.