Center For Community Health & Education (CCHE)

Ambulatory Care Network Community Health Education and Outreach

School-Based Health Centers and Family Planning Practice

The Ambulatory Care Network's Center for Community Health and Education (CCHE) is a community and School-Based Health Center program providing comprehensive medical, mental health, and health education services for medically underserved adolescents and adults in New York City (primarily Washington Heights, Inwood and Harlem). In partnership with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Department of Population and Family Health, CCHE operates the Family Planning Practice (Family Planning and Young Men's Clinics) and seven School-Based Health Centers serving 15 New York City intermediate and high schools.

CCHE collaborates with local New York City public schools, and the Columbia University Departments of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Ophthalmology, and the School of Dental and Oral Surgery.

Mission

Established more than 30 years ago to help address the barriers that prevent New Yorkers from accessing healthcare, CCHE's mission is to improve the health of adolescents, women and men by providing high quality and comprehensive medical, mental health and health education services. CCHE advances service innovations through community partnerships, teaching and advocacy. Patients are treated equally with dignity, courtesy and confidentiality regardless of ability to pay.

Goals

The goals of the CCHE are to:

Provide comprehensive women's and young men's health care services
Provide primary health care services to adolescents that include medical, mental health, health education, and STI/HIV prevention education and counseling services
Prevent early childbearing and delay initiation of first intercourse
Increase the use of effective contraception among sexually active men and women who are not seeking pregnancy

Accomplishments And Support

Each year, CCHE provides services to 14,000 patients at its community-based Family Planning Practice (Family Planning and Young Men's Clinics) with over 34,000 visits. In the seven School-Based Health Center sites, CCHE provides primary health care services to 7,300 patients including reproductive health, mental health services and health education to young people attending schools in the Washington Heights, Inwood and Harlem neighborhoods. These clinics provided more than 38,000 patient visits in the most recent school year.

CCHE was the first community-based program in the United States to provide continuity of reproductive health services from the intermediate school clinic to high school clinic to family planning center. CCHE programs have received awards from the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the Urban League, Family Planning Advocates of New York State, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association and the New York Civil Liberties Union.