Center for Community Health

The People’s Community Center

For four decades, the historic district of downtown Dover has suffered decay, underdevelopment, impoverishment, and despair. After consultation with various stakeholders, a group of Dover citizens founded the People’s Community Center to harness local knowledge and organize local partners and allies to launch programs to address downtown’s most critical problems.

The Need

Diabetes among Black males in Kent County is 25% higher than elsewhere in Delaware.

Health disparities along lines of race and class are well-known nationally. But surprisingly, health disparities in Kent County are even greater than elsewhere in Delaware, despite the fact that Sussex County has more remote farmland and New Castle County has more dense urban infrastructure. Poverty and poor health outcomes here are greater than elsewhere in the state, and more sharply divided by race, class, and gender.

Life Expectancy among Black men is five years less than among White men in Delaware.

Perhaps because the large city of Wilmington has received so much attention as a site of various social crises, Dover has had very little health infrastructure investment, and its poorer residents have little access to primary, pre-natal, and nutritional care. An intervention is needed to allow all Delaware residents a chance at a full and healthy life.

Death by suicide, diabetes, respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease are significantly higher in Kent County than elsewhere in Delaware.

The Vision

The Center for Community Health seeks to ameliorate these disparities, and give residents of Dover an equal chance at life. We work with an OBGYN and a public health Nurse Practitioner who have been providing services to low income downtown residents for years, but without a permanent clinic site. 

The Center will offer the following services:

  • A well-equipped medical clinic specializing in primary care, gynecology and obstetrics, diabetes prevention, and heart disease prevention;
  • Semi-annual neighborhood health fairs, with stations for multiple health promotion screenings;
  • Mental health screenings, peer support groups, and a psychiatric nurse practitioner;
  • Office suite for social workers and a national certified addiction counselor;
  • A dedicated room for Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous.

Local stakeholders have donated over 1000 square feet of downtown space for renovation. We now seek both funding and community-based organizational partners to join us in this life-saving work.

If you are interested in contributing to the program, by volunteering or financial donation, please reach out. We’d love to hear from you. You may also email the Center for Community Health directly at CommunityHealth@peopleschurchofdover.org

46 South Bradford
Dover, Delaware 19904

Every Sunday 10AM

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Office: (302) 674-4177
Facsimile: (302) 674-3423

Office: (302) 674-4177
Facsimile: (302) 674-3423

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office@peopleschurchofdover.org

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