Brockton Neighborhood Health Center was established in 1992 by a group of community members who saw desperate need for services for the city’s growing number of underserved and low-income residents. At that time, there were only only three full-time physicians providing primary and preventive health care to the 26,000 residents of the federally designated Medically Underserved Area (MUA) of downtown Brockton. The rates of teen pregnancy, infant mortality, HIV, and STIs were alarming, and 35% of families lived in poverty. Brockton was the only city of its size in Massachusetts that had not yet opened a health center.
The Board of Trustee’s attempts to open the health center were met with great resistance from local elected officials and business owners, who feared that the health center would attract AIDS, drugs, and crime. The project was blocked by the local zoning board. In order to bypass zoning, BNHC began providing services out of a mobile medical van in church parking lot in 1994. The new executive director, Sue Joss, was able to win over local officials and the new health center opened on Main Street in Brockton shortly thereafter.
Over the last 25 years, Brockton Neighborhood Health Center has seen tremendous growth. In 2007, a new $17 million five-story health center opened, doubling BNHC’s capacity. In 2015, BNHC opened another primary care site adjacent to Vicente’s Tropical Supermarket, a locally-owned, family-operated, and culturally-accessible grocery store. The site offers single-language cooking classes in our state-of-the art teaching kitchen. Community health workers show patients how to read food labels and show in a more healthful way next door after class. It is the only collaboration of its kind in the northeast and has increased access to primary care, increased vegetable purchases at the supermarket, and improved diabetes prevention and intervention through nutrition education.
