700 patients served in cramped Sunday school classrooms

Church2Hours expand as money is raised, with the clinic open for two days a week in October 2002 and finally 40 hours a week in 2003 when Robert Wood Johnson Foundation steps up with a three-year matching grant for $300,000 a year.

In 2003 the clinic has two nurse practitioners and three medical assistants who provide 2,100 medical to approximately 700 patients to the cramped Sunday school classrooms on the church’s second floor.

Local donors match the funds from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. One donor asks about the possibility of purchasing and remodeling the closed neighborhood tavern.

Finding a new location becomes a priority.

Denver Harbor Clinic opens

With grant funding from the Rockwell Foundation and St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities, in 2001 the newly named “Houston Community Health Centers” has enough money to contract with a physician and open a clinic for six hours a week in the upstairs of a local church.

Organization is incorporated

What is now Vecino Health Centers is established in 1999 by the founders, including three church leaders, to address the number-one need in the community: primary health care.

The predominately low-income, largely uninsured residents tended to either go to the hospital emergency room — or didn’t go at all — when they became ill.