“Nearly one-third of the people in Houston don’t have health insurance,” says Eric Roland, director of marketing and communications for Legacy Community Health Services (Legacy). “They don’t have doctors and frequently end up at emergency rooms with things like earaches and sore throats.” Legacy helps relieve clogged emergency rooms and assists more than 33,000 Houstonians each year by offering low-cost to no-cost health care at four Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), one of which includes a convenient Walgreens pharmacy.

The Montrose Clinic and the Assistance Fund—two venerated organizations that worked together early on to help people with HIV/AIDS—merged in 2005 to become Legacy. “We wanted to expand into other communities and needed to change the name,” explains executive director Katy Caldwell. “The name ‘Legacy’ pays homage to those people who came before us and to those still here.” At first heavily dependent upon uncertain congressional funding through the Ryan White CARE Act, Legacy applied for FQHC status at the time of the merger to stabilize and expand the organization. With enhanced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements as FQHCs, and with other government support, the four clinics now offer adult primary care, pediatric and obstetrical care, family planning services, eye care, psychiatric help, physical therapy and nutrition counseling to men, women and children who would otherwise not have access to this care.

Legacy tries to help everyone who walks through its doors. Roland recalls, “In 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Monday, the city flooded on Tuesday and we had our first client here on Wednesday, who said, ‘I’m HIV positive and my medications, records and prescriptions are underwater.’ We realized there would be a lot more coming and set up a system to take care of these people.”

Legacy reaches out to everyone in the communities it serves and has started Grand Aides, a program to enlist and train grandparents—typically the most stable and respected members of a community—to promote good health habits and to mentor parents in their neighborhood. Soon Legacy will move from its original facility on lower Westheimer into new headquarters that will double the clinic’s size and, according to Roland, “offer one-stop shopping,” including the addition of dental care. Caldwell, who oversaw the agency’s transformation into the largest FQHC in Houston, says, “If we have a line out the door, we’ll hire more staff and find more money. Legacy has always seized opportunities to help everyone.”