TROY, N.Y. >> Whitney Young Health cared for almost 20,000 patients in 2016 between its health care centers in Albany, Watervliet and Troy, offering a variety of medical, dental, addiction and mental health care services to individuals of all ages.
Whitney Young Health was not named after its founder, though, but instead hand-selected in 1971 as a vision of quality community health care, regardless of economic status, age, or race to honor a 1960s civil rights leader.
Whitney M. Young Jr. served as director of the National Urban League for a decade until he died in 1971. The league aims to enable African-Americans to become self-sufficient and preserve their civil rights. Young worked to lift the economically and socially disenfranchised, particularly in the African-American community, and was the first black president of the National Association of Social Workers.
Whitney Young Health President and CEO David Shippee said Young’s name serves as a legacy of activism, gracing the walls of area health centers that share their namesake’s goal of lifting the community. Shippee said the first of the centers was founded in Albany to ensure people in low-income communities have access to health care. Prior to the rise of community health centers around the country, Shippee said many low-income patients would be treated too late for health concerns that could have been prevented if addressed sooner.
The goal of community health centers in general, and Whitney Young Health in particular, is to provide care that is both accessible and comfortable for any individual who needs it. Along with its three main health centers, Whitney Young Health also has two addiction centers, three school-based centers and a mobile unit. The school-based centers provide a range of medical services, such as physicals, immunizations and mental health counseling, to students enrolled in the program.
These services are available at three Albany-area schools, while the mobile unit travels to other schools, as well as homeless shelters and recovery centers throughout the area, to attend to different groups.
Shippee said he is especially proud of the center’s ability to cater to a wide demographic, including the region’s immigrant population. He said the center as a whole is the largest practice in the area providing immigrants access to physical exams. Whitney Young Health works with individuals to help them receive medical care and explore options for those without health insurance, something particularly helpful to the immigrant population, especially the influx of women with children from the Middle East, according to Shippee. The center embraces and recognizes these cultural differences, he said, and has interpreters for 26 different languages available for those who receive services.
“We try to reach people who need us,” said Shippee.
The center thrives by focusing on both primary care needs and mental health and addiction services. Shippee said community health centers perform better than private practices because of the quality of the attention to an array of health needs by staff who have a deep knowledge of community health care. Just over half of the health center’s board is composed of individuals who use the clinical services, making them representative of the individuals they serve.
“It’s driven by people in the community,” said Shippee.
