Helping community health centers adapt to changing environments: one foundation's response

The history of community health centers (CHCs) reflects attitudes toward health care delivery in general. Developed as part of the war on poverty, they later survived the more conservative attitudes of the early 1970s to flourish in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, we again witnessed a reduction in the funding available to CHCs. In response to this, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) established The Program to Strengthen Primary Care Health Centers. The program was designed to help centers to adapt to this environment by becoming more businesslike in their operations and decreasing their dependence on public dollars.