Community health centers: A daily lifeline for Arizona’s most vulnerable

Michael White, M.D., MBA

Submitted photo/Valleywise Health

The most important thing our community can do right now is talk about it. If you know someone whose insurance recently lapsed, who can’t afford coverage or who feels like they have nowhere else to turn, tell them there’s still a door open. Community health centers serve everyone, regardless of circumstance or ability to pay, and catching a health issue early is almost always simpler and far less costly than treating it as an emergency.”

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OPINION — The most-dangerous health problems often arrive without warning. Blood pressure climbs silently. Depression goes unspoken. Developmental delays go unnoticed until a child is already behind. That’s why a single appointment, a well-child visit, a primary care checkup, a routine screening, can mean catching a problem early instead of confronting it as an emergency.

But each of these outcomes depends on something easy to take for granted: having a trusted place to turn for care, regardless of your life circumstances.

This month, National Health Center Week recognized these centers as the backbone of the nation’s healthcare safety net and many Americans’ first point of care. If hospitals save lives in a crisis, community health centers are where healthier lives begin, preventing disease and managing chronic conditions long before a hospital bed is needed.

Nationally, they serve tens of millions of patients a year, many facing barriers like being uninsured, lacking transportation or needing care in another language. In Arizona, more than 265 community health center locations serve roughly 870,000 patients.

That need is growing more urgent. A recent analysis found that the number of uninsured Americans, after historic lows this decade, is climbing again as pandemic-era protections wind down and enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire.

Roughly 800,000 people lost coverage last year, and 2.6 million more have dropped ACA marketplace plans this year as premiums rose sharply. Analysts expect the rate to keep climbing as Medicaid eligibility rules tighten. For many of these families, community health centers, required to treat patients regardless of insurance status or ability to pay, are becoming the healthcare home they turn to when coverage lapses.

The scale of this work is evident at Valleywise Health, Maricopa County’s only public safety-net health system, where our 11 federally qualified health centers served more than 94,000 patients last year, up 5% from 2024. Through our collaboration with the Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers, we know other systems statewide are seeing the same rise in need.

In 2025, we screened nearly 59,000 patients age 12 and older for depression, tested more than 44,800 people for HIV, conducted more than 17,000 cervical-cancer screenings and provided well-child visits to close to 14,000 children.

Behind every statistic is someone’s life story: a health issue caught early, treatment started sooner or a patient who might otherwise have gone without care because they no longer had insurance.

That kind of early, consistent care is possible because health center systems bring essential services closer to patients and reduce the obstacles between them and treatment. Primary care, pediatrics, women’s health, pharmacy, lab testing, imaging, dental care, eligibility assistance and language support come together in one coordinated setting, often the difference between preventive care and care postponed.

Access involves more than proximity, though. A patient can’t participate in a treatment decision without understanding what’s proposed, and a provider can’t deliver effective care without understanding the language, culture and everyday realities shaping a patient’s health. That’s why interpretation, cultural navigation and refugee health services are core services, not add-ons.

The benefits extend beyond individual patients, too. Reliable primary care access lets providers prevent illness and manage chronic conditions before they become emergencies, freeing emergency departments to focus on truly urgent cases at a time when hospitals nationwide are absorbing rising uncompensated care.

Community health centers help ensure that income, insurance status, language or ZIP code never determine whether someone gets timely care — and the word “community” is built into their name for a reason. These centers exist because neighbors look out for one another: through a health class, a resource fair or simply someone telling a friend where to go.

The most important thing our community can do right now is talk about it. If you know someone whose insurance recently lapsed, who can’t afford coverage or who feels like they have nowhere else to turn, tell them there’s still a door open. Community health centers serve everyone, regardless of circumstance or ability to pay, and catching a health issue early is almost always simpler and far less costly than treating it as an emergency. Find a community health center near you at findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov, and help spread the word that no one has to go without.

 Michael White, M.D., MBA, is president and chief executive officer for Phoenix-based Valleywise Health, Arizona’s public teaching hospital and safety-net health system. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.