MPCA News

Community Health Partners Health Center in Livingston Targets Literacy

Community Health Partners (CHP) is a Community Health Center in rural Montana. Like other Community Health Centers throughout the country, CHP receives federal funding to provide health care for uninsured and low income individuals. Unlike other health entities, however, CHP steps outside the usual paradigm to address social factors not considered in most other health care systems. Specifically, in an attempt to address the root causes of poverty and health access, CHP is the only Community Health Center in the country with a full-fledged on-site adult, family, and pediatric literacy program.

CHP literacy program staff and friends

CHP sees the most disenfranchised residents in the area. Of the 9,000 patient visits annually, more than 6,000 are from individuals living in poverty. It is estimated that at least half of the adult clients are at the lowest level of literacy, based on educational levels and national data. Awareness of the community's low literacy rate led CHP, in 1999, to implement Reach Out and Read, a national pediatric literacy program that encourages parents to read to children through “prescriptions” for reading aloud and free books. Many parents in the patient population were unable to participate fully because of their own literacy skills. As a result, CHP partnered with the community's adult literacy educators to develop the Adult Basic Education and Literacy (ABEL) program at the Health Center.

By integrating literacy training into the physical environs of the clinical facility, patients are able to acquire literacy skills in a safe, nurturing environment, in which barriers of shame and fear are at a minimum. Enrollment in the ABEL program now totals approximately 150 clients per year - twenty times the enrollment of the freestanding adult-literacy program before it was integrated into the CHP clinic.

The HRSA Bureau of Primary Health Care’s Primary Care Effectiveness Review has recommended CHP’s clinic-based literacy program as a model for national recognition. The program offers one-on-one tutoring, small classes, and computer-assisted instruction.

For more information about CHP’s literacy programs, contact Laurie Francis, Executive Director, Community Health Partners, 406-222-1111.

Montana Primary Care Association 1805 Euclid Avenue Helena, MT 59601 Phone: (406) 442-2750 Fax: (406) 449-2460