A Decade of District Health Center Pioneering

Ten years of work of the East Harlem Health Center in New York are recorded and evaluated in an interesting and enlightening manner. This health center demonstration in coordinated health and welfare work in a defined city area, initiated by the New York chapter of the American Red Cross, was undertaken by the Department of Health and 21 cooperating voluntary agencies of the city. This health center experience illustrates the practical application of teamwork among public and private agencies on a neighborhood basis. It shows how the public health services can be brought more directly and more successfully into the homes of the people, at a relatively low cost. As a result of the work of this center and of other demonstrations, according to the Commissioner of Health, Dr. Wynne, the Department of Health has adopted a city-wide program of neighborhood health centers as the most satisfactory method of bringing together and coordinating the local health and welfare activities of public and private agencies in the common cause. For the past ten years the nursing and health services of the major voluntary agencies have been united in the East Harlem District, in a common program under a single administrative head. The unified service was supported by the pooling of the funds of the service agencies and a substantial contribution from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. The work centered around the health needs of families as determined through intensive home visiting. In spite of unfavorable social and economic conditions in the district, the trend of mortality during the ten years has been more favorable than in the Borough of Manhattan as a whole. Infant mortality fell from an average of 101 deaths per 1,000 births during the five years which preceded the opening of the Center to 54 in 1931. The pulmonary tuberculosis rate during the five-year period 1926-1930 was nearly 39 per cent lower than during the period 1916-1920, which preceded the opening of the Center.