Forty Years of Making Health Happen in North Minneapolis

1968 - 2008

This year marks the 40th Anniversary of NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center as a community health center providing health care services to North Minneapolis.  This year also marks 41 years that Pilot City has provided health and human services to North Minneapolis, first as the Technical Advisory Committee to Implement Community Services (T.A.C.T.I.C.S) then as Pilot City and later as NorthPoint.  Reflecting back on our humble beginnings as Pilot City, there are core principles and values that this organization was founded upon that remain our commitment today and into the future:

• Community engagement, leadership and governance is core to our mission and operations.
• A service delivery model that supports seamless and client-centered integration of services and maintains community partnerships.
• We are a place where clients and patients are customers, stakeholders and partners.
• We are a place where cultural needs, values and expressions are embraced.
• We value and support diversity, inclusion, compassion, stewardship, innovation and integrity.
• We are committed to as asset-based approach for community health and development
• Improved access to health care, education, human and social capital is imperative for a healthy community.

NorthPoint shares its history and legacy as part of the civil rights movement in the 1960's when the community health center model was implemented in a housing project in Boston and in rural Bolivar County, Mississippi on the site of the oldest all-black town in the country.  Dr. Jack Geiger modeled the country's first two community health centers after a model he observed in South Africa while working on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1957.  The model combined public health and clinical medicine under one roof.  The early vision for community health centers was that they not only provided access to health care for poor communities, but they were centers for economic development, education and social justice.

Timeline of NorthPoint's History

Today, NorthPoint continues to plan for expansion of the campus with the construction of new facilities that will house NorthPoint Behavioral Health Clinic and Human Services, University of Minnesota Child & Family Center, YMCA Health & Wellness Fitness Center, Hennepin County Human Services & Public Health and Juvenile Corrections and several community non-profit and educational organizations.  The new center will be connected to a new parking ramp and to the existing clinic building.  NorthPoint along with its partners in this new facility will be operating within the context of a Family-Community Wellness Model to coordinate and integrate services to achieve improved health outcomes.

NorthPoint will continue its legacy and vision as we move forward  in charting our future in partnership with our patients, clients, community partners and the North Minneapolis community.  Thank you North Minneapolis for 40 years!