Health centers are an important source of care for low-income people and communities of color

 Community health centers play an outsize role in providing care to people of color; more than six in ten (62 percent) health center patients are members of racial/ethnic minority groups (Figure 1). In 2020, health centers served one in eight non-Hispanic Black Americans, and one in six Hispanic residents.[4] In 2020, about 975,000 health center patients were Asian, while approximately 248,000 were Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander patients and 351,000 were American Indian/Alaska Native.[5] Health centers served nearly 465,000 residents of eight U.S. territories and Compact of Freely Associated states that year.[6]

Health center patients are overwhelmingly low-income; in 2020, more than two-thirds had family incomes at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level ($21,720 for a family of three that year)[7] and 9 in 10 had family incomes at or below twice poverty. Health centers cared for one-third of people living in poverty in 2020.[1]

Women accounted for more than half (58 percent) of all health center patients in 2020, and women of reproductive age (15-44) accounted for one in four health center patients (26 percent) that year. Health centers served approximately one in three low-income women of reproductive age in the U.S.[2]

Figure 1

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Race/Ethnicity Information

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