Barbara Brooks was as surprised as everyone else when she found out the new Leland Medical Center would be named in her honor.
The clinic, a part of Delta Health Center, was opened Tuesday and DHC CEO John Fairman made the announcement about the naming during the grand opening ceremony.
Brooks has been a long-time City of Leland Alderman. Leland Mayor Kenny Thomas would later take the lectern to say there was no more fitting a name for the new center.
The medical center is one of the 18 facilities operated out of the DHC headquarters in Mound Bayou.
Fairman told the gathered crowd on Tuesday, the administrators of DHC saw only 5% of their patients from the Leland zip code, but knew there was an underserved community in the town.
The medical centers operated by DHC offer medical care paid for on a sliding-scale based on income. No uninsured patients are turned away from the center.
The DHC was the first rural Community Health Center established in 1965 by a grant from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity.
The early days of the DHC saw the organization digging wells, drainage ditches, building privies and installing screens at homes in the Delta.
The services were designed to remedy poor social, economic and environmental conditions leading to health problems.
The DHC now provides services in five counties in the Delta and is part of a national network of community health centers. Those health centers have seen more than 28 million patients in communities throughout the United States.
The Leland Clinic is open from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 8 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. on Friday and from 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.
