August is National Health Awareness Month. In addition to the interview with Joyce Page, Aging Well Durham is highlighting the work of Dr. John Hatch. Dr. Hatch worked to find sustainable solutions to improve community health and to uplift Black, and other marginalized people’s care.
Dr. John W. Hatch fundamentally changed how healthcare organizations work with communities by establishing the first Community Health Center (CHC), Delta Health Center, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1965 along with community members, Dr. Jack Geiger and Dr. Count Gibson.
Formerly enslaved people founded Mound Bayou in 1887. Understanding that social conditions shape community and individual health, the Delta Health Center provided comprehensive community health services, including primary care, transportation, nutrition programs and a cooperative farm with a cannery and bookstore. Delta Health Center is the first Federally Qualified Health Center in the United States and still operates today.
After studying Sociology in Atlanta during the Civil Rights movement, Dr. Hatch received an offer to work with the immigrant population in South Boston. While he helped them get housing, jobs, and education, he was exposed to various healthcare systems, discovering what worked and what did not.
Moving forward, he attended Tufts University Medical School’s Department of Preventive Medicine, where he began to work with Dr. Jack Geiger and Count Gibson. He immersed himself in their project in Mound BayouMississippi, learning the communities’ needs and existing services.
He began training community members in various healthcare issues, identifying the need for the Center to partner with the community, an idea that changed Community Health Centers dramatically by allowing them to be owned, directed, and operated by the people they served. He elevated the importance of health care in rural and Black communities, especially.
Continuing his career in health services, Dr. Hatch became a Professor at the Department of Health Behavior, at the University of North Carolina. He went on to create dozens of programs in the South. He is now a retired Professor Emeritus, but remains a community health icon.
“The Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship, established in 1997, honors two distinguished former faculty members in the Gillings School’s health behavior department, Dr. Hatch and the late Howard Barnhill. Both men dedicated their careers to community-based public health programs and advocacy on behalf of the poor and underserved in North Carolina, across the country and around the world, and both took an active interest in mentoring students interested in public health practice, especially students of color.”
https://www.nachc.org/dr-john-hatch-co-founder-of-one-the-earliest-health-centers/
