Danbury health center expands to serve more patients, train 'next generation' of providers - Danbury News Times

DANBURY — The Connecticut Institute for Communities has expanded its health center, with additional space for dentistry, pediatrics and other care.

The new wing of the building at 120 Main St. is approximately 8,500 square feet and includes three new dental operatories, a new family medicine suite, eight additional pediatric and adult medicine exam rooms, and a primary care simulation laboratory for organization's Teaching Health Center program.

The Connecticut Institute for Communities, abbreviated CIFC, unveiled during a ribbon cutting on Thursday a new name and logo for the building, which will now be called CIFC Health (pronounced civic health).

CIFC Health is a federally-qualified community health center, with a stated mission of ensuring affordable, accessible, comprehensive, high quality health care to residents in the Danbury area. It does not turn people away and uses a sliding-fee basis for patients.

One of the CIFC Health programs, the Primary Care Adult Medicine Residency Program, allows participants with medical degrees to prepare for a career in primary care.

"We are a teaching health center, which means we train our own post-MD residents in community-based settings," CIFC president and CEO Katie Curran said. "We are the only accredited teaching health center in the state of Connecticut."

Originally 36,000 square feet, the health center building, which doubles as CIFC headquarters, was designed with expansion in mind.

With the expansion, CIFC hopes to care for more patients and create the best possible learning environment for residents.

"A big part of this space is being dedicated to our residents," Curran said. "There is a new study area for them in the building, as well as what we think is the first of its kind in a community health center in the country, which is an outpatient simulation lab for our residents to train and learn important procedures."

The purpose of the teaching health center according to Curran is to "train the next generation of primary care providers who are dedicated to working in community-based settings where they are serving underserved patients." Nearly 75 percent of the program's graduates have gone on to work in primary care.

The new health center wing was made possible by a combination of state bond funds and a $3 million loan from three community banks, according to Curran. Union Savings Bank, Newtown Savings Bank and Savings Bank of Danbury each committed $1 million to the loan.

This is just one project CIFC has embarked on. The organization earned a $2 million state grant last month to build a two-level garage accommodating roughly 100 parking spaces behind the health center. The goal is to add 80 housing units for low- and moderate-income residents on top of the garage.

The lieutenant governor and other elected officials celebrated the grant in Danbury on Friday morning.

"The creation of this garage will allow more ease and accessibility for patients to CIFC, allowing for more clients to be able to receive their much-needed services," said Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz. "These dollars are part the most recent State Bonding Commission agenda, where most dollars were directed to local nonprofits, governments and state agencies seeking funding to support a variety of projects throughout the state. This $2 million dollar allocation for CIFC will allow the center to serve more patients, children and families, helping facilitate our administration's goal to create a more affordable, heathier Connecticut."

New name

With the expansion, the health center will retire the name Greater Danbury Community Health Center.

The name change derived from practical reasons, hoping to dissuade previous confusion within the community.

"There is another community health center with a satellite in Danbury known as CHC Inc.," Curran said. "So obviously you can see the confusion between CIFC and CHC Inc.. We found during the pandemic when we were both testing and running vaccines, we would sometimes get calls from their patients for results and vice versa, so we wanted to make clear who we are."

CIFC has 14 total sites, mostly in Danbury, but that also includes a school-based health center in Newtown and sites in New Milford. The organization is actively looking to work with Brookfield Public Schools.

"The health center was known as the Greater Danbury Community Health Center and we changed it for a couple reasons," Curran said. "One being that we are expanding into other areas of the community."

Accompanying the name change was the announcement of a new logo, one that aspires to better represent the organization.

"We are very happy about the new logo, which has a lot of vibrant colors," Curran said. "We think it is representative of the diversifications that we serve. Fifty percent of our patients are best served in a language other than English, so we serve a very diverse population, and we think the logo reflects who we are."