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Community Health Center Movement Mourns Leading Advocate Rev. Jeannette J. Phillips

The Reverend Jeannette J. Phillips, a powerful force for change in community health care, died on Tuesday evening, surrounded by loved ones, after a lifetime of distinguished service. A visionary leader, pastor, Community Health Center network founder, and the matriarch of a large and growing family, she helped guide the emergence of patient-led community health care in New York State from its roots in the civil rights movement into the modern era.

Rev. Phillips opened the Peekskill Area Ambulatory Health Care Center in 1975 along with three other African American founding mothers: the late Mary Woods, Willie Mae Jackson, and Pearl Woods, to provide access to health care for their community. With the other founders and long-time CEO Anne Kauffman Nolon, she grew the Peekskill Health Center—now Sun River Health—into one of the largest Federally Qualified Health Center networks in the United States, serving patients across the Hudson Valley, New York City, and Long Island at nearly 50 sites.

Jeannette J. Phillips was born in Harlem, New York City in 1933. She attended the historic Booker T. Washington High School in Miami, Florida, where her academic and social engagements, including delivering an anti-Korean War graduation message, helped shape her future pursuits. Upon her graduation in 1955, Rev. Phillips accepted a job at the Veterans Hospital in Montrose, New York, where she became passionate about increasing access to quality health care.

In 1956, she married Howard Phillips. When they were approached by a member of the Veteran's Administration to provide housing for community veterans and seniors, they readily accepted and invited them into their own home. This gave Rev. Phillips a firsthand understanding of the unmet needs of residents in her own community.

In 1972, Rev. Phillips, along with Deputy Commissioner of the Westchester Health Department Dr. Phyllis Koteen, Dr. Ron Johnson of the New York Medical Academy at Grasslands in Valhalla, and Westchester Community Action Program Director Harriet Gelfan, spearheaded efforts to secure one of the last grants from the Office of Economic Opportunity to open the Peekskill Area Ambulatory Health Care Center. This work was completed with the late Mary Woods, Willie Mae Jackson, and Pearl Woods.

With CEO Anne Kauffman Nolon, Rev. Phillips and the other founders responded to requests from...

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