60 years of community health center excellence
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 2 months AGO
Centers like Moses Lake Community Health Center, shown here, are celebrating 60 years of serving communities regardless of insurance.
CHERYL SCHWEIZER/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | August 6, 2025 1:20 AM
MOSES LAKE — This week is National Health Center Week, and the Moses Lake Community Health Center is celebrating.
“Moses Lake Community Health Center is proud to be part of a movement that has transformed healthcare delivery for underserved communities,” Sheila Berschauer, CEO of Moses Lake Community Health Center, wrote in a statement. “We celebrate our dedicated staff, our resilient patients, and the vital role we play in improving health outcomes in Grant County and beyond.”
MLCHC opened in 1978 and serves more than 32,000 people every year, according to the announcement. Since its opening, it’s expanded to neighboring communities, opening a clinic in Quincy in 2002 and in Ephrata in 2015, said Marketing Director Stephanie Melcher. Services include medical, dental, behavioral health, social services and pharmacy. The clinic in Ephrata offers only dental care, but that could change, Melcher said.
“We were supposed to go into Ephrata and create a clinic … and we were going to start building, but the cost factor kind of deterred that at the time,” Melcher said. “So, we bought an existing building that came up for sale … it used to be a law office and we remodeled that.”
MLCHC still owns other property in Ephrata, Melcher said, and hopes to use that to expand medical services there.
Besides the medical and dental care, MLCHC also administers the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, program and offers maternity support services. The center has a fourth office in Warden that handles only WIC, Melcher said.
Between the clinics, there are 29 medical providers and 21 dental providers, Melcher wrote in an email to the Columbia Basin Herald.
The first community health centers opened 60 years ago, in 1965, and now number more than 1,500 in all 50 states, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers. They serve a wide range of clients, with or without insurance. Uninsured patients can pay on a sliding scale according to their ability, but the center accepts many insurance plans. Most of the staff get their health care from MLCHC, Melcher said. Nevertheless, there’s a misconception that community health centers are somehow lower quality than private clinics, which is completely untrue, she said.
“All three of our locations are great buildings,” she said. “They’re clean and kept up … We have wonderful providers, and our staff is all local community members. It's very community-based and it’s a great place to go.”
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”