Returning to Where It All Started for Me: Celebrating Federally Qualified Health Centers

I was thrilled to join the Morgan County Medical Center (MCMC) last week in Wartburg, TN, to celebrate their 50 years of serving the community. Judy Byrge, CEO of MCMC, recounted the Center’s history through old newspaper headlines dating back to the 1970s when residents wanted to ensure access to medical care for the people of Morgan County and the surrounding areas. It was a moment to reflect on the leadership and vision of those committed community members whose shoulders MCMC’s remarkable growth and impact stand upon.

Today, Morgan Country has around 21,000 residents, and MCMC has 51 employees (and growing), offering medical, behavioral health and dental services to patients of all ages, regardless of their ability to pay. Tennessee State Senator Ken Yager gave remarks and highlighted the many lives that have been transformed by MCMC.

Mine is one of those lives. Fresh from my residency training, I moved to Tennessee with my husband and newborn son in 1986 to join the staff of MCMC and begin my career as a family physician. I could not have predicted all I would learn over the next four years about community, trust and relationships.

My experience through those years also taught me lessons about the power of partnerships when resources are limited and needs are great. In retrospect, partnering with the county health department? foreshadowed my later career in public health. It was a joy to see staff from the Morgan County Health Department joining the celebration.

When my husband and I left Tennessee in 1990, we had three children. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop visited MCMC just before my third child was born. He highlighted our work in a documentary on health care access in the United States. We did a home visit together and were filmed doing a walking (in my case, waddling) interview outside the home on a rocky path.

My husband and I started our academic careers at Indiana University School of Medicine in 1990, and I soon applied lessons learned during my time in Tennessee in my teaching and practice. Medical students loved hearing the stories and commented often on how the stories reflected why they had chosen a career in medicine and had a hard time getting through my lectures without emotion as I remembered my patients. Some medical students decided to practice in rural communities after hearing my stories. I applied the lessons about community, trust, relationships and partnerships when I became Indiana’s state health officer and in my work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the CDC Foundation.

Federally Qualified Health Centers have a rich history with decades of serving those with limited access to healthcare, though all are welcome. I’m proud of MCMC’s incredible impact on the people of Morgan County over the past 50 years as one example of the many Federally Qualified Health Centers. However, the story of their impact goes well beyond the patients they’ve served. Like me, there are many leaders in medicine and public health who served in community health centers and whose careers were greatly informed and influenced by their time there.

Judy Monroe, MD, is president and CEO of the CDC Foundation