Community Health Centers (CHCs) were established in the 1960s as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. The first modern CHC in the United States, Columbia Point Health Center in Dorchester, Massachusetts, opened in December 1965.
In 2026, 1,512 CHC organizations deliver care at more than 17,000 locations across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, as well as American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Freely Associated States (FAS). Their focus is to provide affordable, comprehensive primary care to people who might otherwise be unable to access it.
Every August, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) sponsors National Health Center Week to celebrate and increase awareness of CHCs in the U.S. National Health Center Week 2026 runs from August 2-8. It’s important to highlight the work of health centers, especially as they navigate rising operating costs, workforce shortages and shifting coverage policies that affect millions of Americans.
About Community Health Centers
Community health centers serve more than 52 million Americans, or about one in seven people nationwide and one in three residents in rural areas. Combined to make up the nation’s largest primary care system, CHCs are typically located in medically underserved urban and rural areas and provide primary care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.
CHCs integrate medical, specialty and social services, such as mental health, substance use treatment, oral health, case management, translation services, transportation and employment services. In addition to traditional locations, health center sites include those located at schools, homeless shelters and mobile and seasonal sites.
The statistics below showcase the role CHCs play in U.S. healthcare:
- CHCs deliver primary care to 14 percent of the U.S. population for only one percent of total U.S. healthcare spending.
- Approximately 34 million unique patients annually visit health centers for care.
- Health centers provide more than 139 million visits annually, 65 percent of which are for medical services.
- CHCs provide care to approximately 389,000 veterans and 1.3 million patients experiencing homelessness.
- CHCs serve more than nine million children annually.
- Nine in ten health center patients live in low-income households, and more than 60 percent are patients of color.
- Roughly six in ten health centers serve patients in medically underserved urban areas, while four in ten provide healthcare in rural communities.
- Since 2012, CHCs have seen a 45 percent increase in the number of people seeking care.
- Health centers produce more than $118 billion in economic output in the communities in which they operate.
How CHCs Deliver Accessible and Affordable Care
By using a sliding-fee scale based on income and family size, CHCs enable patients, including adults and children, to access care regardless of their incomes. Services offered by CHCs include:
- Primary medical care, preventive care and chronic disease management
- Dental and vision care
- Mental health and substance use treatment
- Pharmacy, care coordination and referrals to specialists
- Enabling services, such as translation, transportation, case management and employment support
Not only do CHCS often assist patients with social determinants of health (SDOH), from food security service connections to housing referrals, many also employ multilingual staff to ensure culturally competent patient care and provide tailored services to address local language, cultural and social needs.
CHCs make healthcare more accessible for the populations they serve. Roughly 88 percent of health centers offer same or next-day appointments, and more than 90 percent offer expanded hours for patients to receive care.
The CHC workforce has grown to 326,000 full-time employees. More than 60 percent of health center staff provide patient care or enabling services, including medical (33 percent), enabling (10 percent), dental and vision (seven percent), mental health and substance use disorder (seven percent), pharmacy (three percent) and other professional services (one percent).
Federally Qualified Health Center Requirements
Federally-qualified health center (FQHC)s operate under Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act and are required by law to provide primary care and supportive services. Although Medicaid is the largest revenue source for CHCs, Federal Section 330 grants also provide substantial support.
A federally-qualified health center (FQHC) has unique requirements from other healthcare settings including being located within medically underserved areas and providing comprehensive primary care for all, regardless of ability to pay. FQHCs are required by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to report standardized data annually through the Uniform Data System. Also, at least 51 percent of a community health center’s board must be patients of the health center.
Rural CHC Challenges
Roughly one in five people live in a rural area, but fewer than 10 percent of physicians practice there. Rural community health centers fill that gap as essential providers for entire regions. One study found that patients who receive a majority of their care at CHCs have substantially lower annual overall medical expenditures (24 percent) and ambulatory expenditures (25 percent) than those who do not.
About one in three rural residents relies on CHCs, and roughly four in ten health centers focus primarily on rural areas. Rural CHCs contribute approximately $38 billion annually to local economies and employ more than 96,000 staff.
The states employing the most staff in rural CHCs consist of California (8,202 full-time employees), Missouri (4,374 FTEs), West Virginia (3,876 FTEs), Texas (4,209 FTEs) and Washington (4,089 FTEs). Although they offer numerous advantages to the communities they serve, rural CHCs face persistent challenges, including:
- Severe workforce shortages, particularly in behavioral health, dental and specialty care
- Funding instability in states that have not expanded Medicaid, where uncompensated care burdens remain high
- Aging facilities and limited broadband that constrain telehealth and modern data systems
- Geographic isolation and transportation barriers.
- Poorer health outcomes compared to urban counterparts
Providertech.ai: Artificial Intelligence for FQHCs and CHCs
AI augments community health centers, FQHCs and other healthcare providers by automating the numerous administrative tasks for which they’re responsible. In addition to enabling administrative efficiency, decreased clinician burnout, personalized patient outreach and expanded access to healthcare, it enables them to spend more time on patient care and other complex tasks.
Check out our case study to learn how Piedmont Health, North Carolina’s first FQHC grantee, is utilizing Providertech.ai to achieve a 40 percent decrease in abandoned calls, a 60+ percent increase in Spanish call completion, improved appointment access for patients and more.
