WHEREAS, Community Health Centers were established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, a national effort to address poverty and racial inequity in rural and underserved communities; and

WHEREAS, since then, Community Health Centers have played a valuable role in providing high quality, cost-effective, and accessible primary and preventive care including integrated medical, dental, and behavioral health to all individuals regardless of insurance status or ability to pay; and

WHEREAS, Community Health Centers have been on the frontlines of every public health crisis in the past 55 years, including HIV/AIDS, HlNl, Zika virus, the Opioid Crisis, and COVID-19 pandemic; and

WHEREAS, locally governed by a Board of Directors that includes patients as well as local business and community leaders, the Community Health Center model provides an effective means of reducing health disparities and barriers to access and, by doing so, improves patient outcomes and reduces health care costs; and

WHEREAS, Maine's 20 Community Health Centers provide affordable, accessible care to more than 200,000 people at over 70 service sites from Fort Kent to Kittery, and are critical small businesses that employ nearly 2,000 people while contributing $447 million in direct and community spending to the local and state economy; and

WHEREAS, Maine's Community Health Centers are essential to the economic health and well-being of all Maine people, providing quality care, community empowerment, addressing health equity, responding to public health emergencies, reducing health care costs and supporting the economy; and

WHEREAS, Maine Community Health Center Week provides the opportunity to recognize and celebrate the dedication, hard work and heroic efforts of the staff, board members, and all who make the state's Health Centers a success;

NOW THEREFORE, be it resolved that I, Janet T. Mills, Governor of the State of Maine, do hereby proclaim the week of August 6 through 12, 2023, as

Community Health Center Week

throughout the State of Maine, and I urge all citizens to recognize this observance.

In testimony whereof, I have caused the Great Seal of the State to be hereunto affixed GIVEN under my hand at Augusta this nineteenth day of July Two Thousand Twenty-Three