About CHP
MISSION
Our mission is to nurture and inspire healthy lives for people throughout the Berkshires by delivering exceptional and compassionate health care and family services.
VISION
As a champion for the well-being of those we serve, our vision is to be a leading choice for health care in the Berkshires and a model for providing the best in rural health care.
OUR CORE VALUES:
Caring: We treat all people with empathy, dignity, and kindness.
Inclusiveness: We respect all people, value diversity, and are committed to equity in providing care.
Excellence: We strive to maintain the highest levels of quality and, where needed, to pursue continuous improvement in all of our services.
Collaboration: We are dedicated to teamwork and encouraging and appreciating the contributions of our staff, patients, and community partners.
Stewardship: We are a responsible and sustainable resource – as an employer, financially and environmentally – in the communities we serve.
Choose CHP for your health care. Choose excellence for yourself and your family.
CHP Berkshires spans Berkshire County with nine practice locations in Great Barrington, Lee, Pittsfield, Adams and North Adams, providing medical, dental and nutrition services. Our CHP Mobile Health team carries on our long and effective practice of taking health care on the road, to find people where they are and where they need care.
Each year, we care for more than 30,000 Berkshire area residents, and we promise care to everyone who enter our practices, regardless of insurance status.
Our integrated network offers adult and pediatric primary care, women’s health, dental care and nutrition. Through our primary care clinicians, we can refer patients to short-term behavioral health support. Our practitioners are all board-certified or licensed as required by law.
Our highly skilled OB/GYN team is affiliated with Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington, and our talented Family Services team supports thousands of families in our region with an array of services.
Our patients and clients are culturally, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse–a reflection of our ever-changing Berkshire community. Our clinicians and support staff are skilled in providing inclusive and culturally competent care, from the moment you make your appointment through any follow-up or return care you may need. We are also well-known for our outspoken commitment to equity in LGBTQ+ health care.
Don’t be surprised if your clinical team inquires about your housing situation, food security, mental well-being, or stress you may be experiencing — because each of these factors can impact your physical health.
At CHP, we believe everyone should have access to health care. No matter who, no matter what.
Our History
In 1975, a Great Barrington pediatrician named Dr. Thomas Whitfield became a change-maker.
He took action after seeing a growing number of children in his practice for kindergarten physical exams — children who had not seen a doctor since birth or infancy. Children lacked immunizations. Many had medical problems or delays in language, social, and cognitive skills, due to isolation. In response, he founded Children’s Health Program, with a mission to health care to rural children, and to offer support services to their parents..
He and his staff traveled back roads in a station wagon looking for houses with toys outside and diapers on the line, in an effort to connect with their parents. Shepherded by Dr. Whitfield and Children’s Health Program’s first executive director, Linda Small, the agency went on to add parent support and childhood education services (the Family Support Network). CHP launched a WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) nutrition program, and formed the First Steps program to bring early intervention therapy to children with developmental delays or disabilities.
The Evolution of CHP
As the needs of the Berkshire community grew, CHP responded. In 2000, after 25 years of serving only children, Children’s Health Program made a giant leap and obtained designation as federally qualified health center, of which more than 1,400 exist today in the U.S. This designation expanded CHP health care to adults.
The newly re-named Community Health Programs’ (CHP) caseload grew virtually overnight from 1,500 to over 4,000. Many of CHP’s new adult patients had been childhood pediatric patients Children’s Health Program. And then…
- In 2007, CHP assumed ownership and responsibility for Barrington OB/GYN, a thriving practice in Great Barrington providing comprehensive women’s health care services to women of all ages.
- In 2008, the Neighborhood Health Center in Pittsfield transitioned to CHP ownership from Berkshire Health Systems, becoming CHP’s second health center, behind the Great Barrington Health Center.
- That same year, in response to the desperate need for accessible, affordable dental care in south Berkshire County, CHP opened CHP Family Dental Center in Great Barrington.
- In 2009, CHP acquired nearly eight acres with three buildings on Stockbridge Road (Route 7) in Great Barrington. Here, CHP consolidated most South County programs.
- In 2012, the longstanding Lee Family Practice joined CHP’s health network.
- In December of 2015, Adams Internists and North Adams Family Medicine joined the CHP team, expanding CHP’s network into Northern Berkshire.
- In October of 2016, Neighborhood Dental Center in Pittsfield joined CHP.
- In August of 2017, CHP gained its first pediatric medicine practice with the addition of Berkshire Pediatrics, a longstanding Pittsfield practice with some 12,000 patients.
- In 2019, we grew again, adding a dental center to our North Adams medical practice, now called North Adams Family Medical and Dental Center.
- In 2022, CHP established a family nurse practitioner residency program, a growing trend in nursing education.
- In 2024, CHP opened a new Adams location, for Adams Family Dental and Family Services.
- In 2024, CHP is constructing a new site for Great Barrington Family Dental.