History

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the steel industry, the economic engine of the community, and other related businesses closed. Between 1978 and 1985, more than 43,000 workers were laid off in the South Chicago area. As a result, the number of outside visitors decreased, contributing further to the decline and, more important, the flight of providers and medical services. Health care was limited to a city Department of Health storefront facility providing prenatal and well-baby care two afternoons a week.

Several community residents and the Claretian priests of the local Catholic church came together to ensure that residents would have the vital services they needed. After a great deal of work and planning, these leaders opened the Claretian Medical Center, now Chicago Family Health Center.

CFHC opened its South Chicago Clinic doors in 1977 in a storefront at 91st and Commercial Avenue. During its first year of operation, the staff of five provided services to 400 patients in the communities of South Chicago, South Deering, and the East Side.

At the request of the Bureau of Primary Health Care, the Pullman facility opened in 1987 to serve the Roseland, Pullman and West Pullman communities. As in the South Chicago area, the Roseland community underwent a dramatic, destabilizing transition in the 1960s and 1970s, when approximately 40,000 white residents moved away and approximately 38,000 African-American residents moved in. Simultaneous with the demographic transition, Chicago's south-side steel mills and factories began closing their doors. This transition ultimately led to a limited number of primary care providers who were reluctant to treat Medicaid or uninsured patients.

Today, CFHC serves more than 19,000 patients in more than 69,000 medical and dental visits and 18,000 social services visits a year. CFHC providers delivered more than 600 babies in 2008.