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Research Guides@Tufts

Boston to Mound Bayou: Columbia Point & Delta Health Center

Welcome!

This guide has been created to help you learn more about Tufts University's archival materials regarding the establishment of the Columbia Point Health Center (Boston, MA) and Delta Health Center, Inc. (Mound Bayou, MS), which helped launch the community health center movement.

The materials in this guide pertain to the following :

  • Columbia Point Health Center
  • Delta Health Center, Inc.
  • H. Jack Geiger, MD, MSciHyg
  • Count D. Gibson. MD

This guide contains links to archival materials as well as photographic images that originally appeared in the Tufts Medical Alumni Bulletin or another Tufts publication. They appear courtesy of Tufts University.  

About the Columbia Point Health Center and Delta Health Center, Inc.

This guide has been created to help you learn more about Tufts University's archival materials regarding the establishment of the Columbia Point Health Center (Boston MA) and Delta Health Center, Inc. (Mound Bayou MS), which helped launch the community-health-center movement.

“In the 1960s, as President Johnson’s declared 'War on Poverty' began to ripple through America, the first proposal for the U.S. version of a community health center sprung to life at the Office of Economic Opportunity. Funding was approved in 1965 for the first of two neighborhood health center demonstration projects, one in Boston, Massachusetts, and the other in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.” [1]

Spearhearded by Count Gibson and H. Jack Geiger, physican-activists and Tufts Medical School faculty members, the creation of the Columbia Point Health Center and the Delta Health Center, "helped launch the American Community Health Center Movement more than 45 years ago." [2]. The Columbia Point Health Center and Delta Health Center, and Tufts University's role in their establishment, were pivotal in the history of community health in the United States.

Dr. H. Jack Geiger & Dr. John W. Hatch during construction on the Delta Health Center, 1968
Image credit: Daniel Bernstein/U.S. National Library of Medicine

Discover more about the Community Health Center Movement

    • On Common Ground
      Part of the National Library of Medicine's exhibit "Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health," this site contains photographs and audiovisual materials regarding the establishment of the Delta Health Center.
       
    •  History of Community Health Centers
      Created by the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, this website provides "a comprehensive history of community health centers up through the present."

 

References

[1] Ravenswood Family Health Clinic. The Community Health Center Movement. Available at: http://www.ravenswoodfhc.org/images/pdf/History-of-community-Health-Center-Movement.pdf. Accessed: December 23, 2013.

[2] Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. History of Community Health Centers.  Available at: http://www.massleague.org/CHC/History.php.  Accessed: December 23, 2013.

 

Guide Author

Amy E. LaVertu, MLS

Contact Info
(617) 636-3988
Sackler Bldg 610
Monday-Friday 8AM-4PM
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Project Funding


This project is funded the National Network of Libraries of Medicine New England Region (NN/LM NER)  Express Library Digitization Award.

Subjects: Public Health