South Cove Community Health Center was incorporated in 1972 by a group of volunteers in response to the inadequate provision of primary care services for the local residents in Boston Chinatown due to their language and cultural differences.

Early Beginnings

Immigration laws were changed in the 1960s, initiating an increase of new immigrants to urban America. This population expansion brought significant demographic change on a local level. Like other major urban centers absorbing this influx, Boston's Chinatown changed from a mostly bachelor worker society to a family-based community. This dramatic transition brought a set of unique needs and challenges for which the surrounding medical facilities of the time were not equipped to handle. The growth in households brought an increased demand for linguistically and culturally fluent primary care services.

Today Today, more than 34 years later, South Cove has five sites located in the greater Boston area with over 150 employees, serving approximately 20,000 patients annually. Our current mission is to improve the health and well-being of Asian Americans in Massachusetts, with a special focus on the medically underserved. This mission is accomplished by providing high quality, community-based health care and programs which are accessible, affordable, as well as linguistically and culturally competent for these populations.

Today, we face many new challenges in providing health care for Asian Americans such as:

• Increase in ethnic diversity within the Asian community
• Rise of new Asian communities in surrounding areas with maintenance of ties to Chinatown
• Development of the HMO system

To continue to meet the needs of our communities in this changing world, we have:

• Established satellite clinics in those surrounding communities with relatively high percentage of Asians. These clinics are staffed by native language speakers, including Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodian.
• Expanded complementary service including health education outreach.