As I approach the end of a 27-year tenure as CEO of the Tennessee Primary Care Association, my reflections keep circling around to stories about the people and events of the past three decades. Mitch Albom, the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, writes about the impact of stories in our lives:  “There's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking.” I would add that sometimes the stories are inspiring, sometimes they are hilarious, and other times the listener swears you are making this stuff up.

The beginning of the Community Health Center movement is in itself a great story. A young physician named Jack Geiger had a transformative experience during a five-month stint in South Africa that crystallized for him the interrelationship between poverty, nutrition, education, and health, and showed him a new community-based model of care.  A young school teacher named Lyndon Johnson is shaped by the hunger he sees in the eyes of his students in a rural Texas schoolhouse, later compelling him to wage war on poverty. The stories of these individuals and many others come together during an opportune moment in history, giving birth to Community Health Centers. This story has generated thousands more, including the unique stories of 30 Community Health Centers in Tennessee.  Over the years, I have witnessed the incredible growth of health centers and worked alongside many of the characters that inhabit their stories.

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