People We Serve:

Great Brook Valley Health Center serves people of all ages from diverse cultural backgrounds. In FY 2009, approximately 20,900 people from over 100 Central Massachusetts and Metro West cities and towns came to our health centers for over 122,800 visits. This includes 3,213 people with more than 11,000 visits at Framingham Community Health Center.

Our wonderfully diverse client population is primarily Hispanic (42%), Brazilian (25%), White non-Hispanic (15%), African immigrant, African American, Albanian, Asian, Native American and Middle Eastern. Our Refugee Health Assessment Program served refugees from 17 countries in FY 09. Our newest refugee and asylee populations are from Burundi, Myanmar (Burma), Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, DR Congo, Bhutan, Cuba, Rwanda, Jamaica, Central African Republic, Sudan, Sierre Leone, Kenya, Chad, Haiti and Zimbabwe in FY 2009.

Nearly 77% of our clients do not speak English as a first language; 37% speak Spanish, 28% speak Portuguese, and others speak languages such as Albanian (2%), Arabic (2%), Burmese, Chin, Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Haitian Creole, Italian, Karen, Karenni, Kayah, Korean, Laotian, Lithuanian, Lebanese, Mahatri, Malyalam, Mina, Nepali, Papiamentu, Patios, Punjabi, Polish, Romania, Russian, Sgaw, Tagalag, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and 7% of our patients speak more than 24 African languages.