Photo | Grant Welker
Kennedy Community Health Center in Worcester
February 23, 2021
'We kept the doors open at all times:' Kennedy CHC head touts importance of care during pandemic
Photo | Courtesy
Steve Kerrigan
By Grant Welker
The Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center was thrown into upheaval early last year by the coronavirus pandemic just like virtually every other workplace. Unlike many others, though like a lot of other healthcare providers, it was never afforded a chance to close for any length of time to recalibrate.
"We kept the doors open at all times," the health center's president and CEO, Steve Kerrigan, said Tuesday in a web forum hosted by the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Kerrigan spoke about the role of the Kennedy health center and other community health centers, including the Family Health Center of Worcester, nearly a year into the pandemic this week hit a milestone of 500,000 killed in the United States. Community health centers have played an unusually important role in a pandemic disproportionately impacting minorities and those in entry-level service jobs either eliminated or unable to take place remotely. Kennedy's patient population, for example, is 90% low-income, 71% minority and 30% without health insurance.
Just over a quarter of Kennedy's roughly 28,000 patients are children, a share of the population that's been vastly disrupted by schools that these days often aren't holding classes in person. Many patient services have been shifted online, and only one service has been suspended: optometry, which was offered through a partnership with MCPHS University in Worcester.
For Kerrigan and his staff at Kennedy, the first priority when the pandemic hit was keeping staff safe. The health center set up screening tents outside its office, and fortuitously had recently invested in new information technology making remote work easier. Still, staff wasn't immune. More than 60 of the center's 360 or so employees have tested positive — all from community spread, Kerrigan said — and a pharmacist died last summer.
Late last year, Kerrigan decided to mandate all health center employees be vaccinated except for those with health or religious exemptions. The idea was not only to immunize the staff but to indicate to patients the vaccines were safe and effective. More than 90% of the staff has been vaccinated. Kerrigan said he's eager to be able to help vaccinate more of the public if or when the health center is able to. He also defended state officials who've been under fire for a slow vaccine rollout across Massachusetts, describing the undertaking as complex and without precedent.
For the Kennedy Community Health Center, the pandemic has been an opportunity to help vulnerable patients during the greatest need since it was founded in 1972 with a single nurse in one apartment at the Great Brook Valley Gardens housing complex. By 1992, it moved into the standalone building it now occupies across the street. In 2004 it expanded into Framingham, and a decade later into Milford. In 2010, it renamed itself from Great Brook Valley for the late U.S. Senator whose work for health care is one of his great legacies.
For much of the public, community health centers have been overlooked or taken for granted, Kerrigan said, hopeful the pandemic may change that.
"This pandemic has given us a chance to show folks our real intrinsic value," he said.
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