Five Rivers Health Centers is committed to expanding access to quality, comprehensive and respectful care for its patients and the community. As a federally qualified health center, FRHC is a one-stop agency for patients, providing services ranging from medical and dental care to massage therapy. The nonprofit organization serves some of our region’s most vulnerable citizens, with 94 percent of its patients living at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
Read more about FRHC and how you can help them help others in this Q&A featuring its CEO Gina McFarlane-El.
Five Rivers Health Centers has been in operation since 2011. Why are your services more important now than ever?
As more of our patients struggle to meet their basic needs, Five Rivers Health Centers continues to be a centralized location to help meet our 27,000 patients’ medical needs, as well as their dental, vision, behavioral health, dietary, women’s health, clinical pharmacology, sickle cell management, Centering Pregnancy, podiatry, infectious disease and sports management needs. By providing free transportation to and from appointments, free pharmacy delivery service and assistance for food and housing, we help our patients with the social determinants of health. These priorities are important to the Board of FRHC.
What changes are you looking to implement, or which programs are you hoping to build upon?
We are beyond excited about the opening of our new Xenia Campus, located at 34 South Allison Street in downtown Xenia, on March 2, 2026. This new location combines two sites under one larger roof and adds our new low-cost pharmacy for our patients. We serve the largest number of patients in Xenia, with our Greene County Health Center and Star Pediatrics locations providing care to more than 4,000 patients through over 14,000 visits. This campus will continue to provide family medicine, pediatrics, women’s health, dental, behavioral health, podiatry and clinical pharmacy support.
Recent grants awarded from Dayton Foundation funds to your organization include support for your pharmacy robot to help provide low-cost prescriptions to clients and for your Senior Resource Pantry. How do gifts like these help you help others?
These gifts are the lifeblood of our organization, and we are eternally grateful to The Dayton Foundation and its fund holders for their continuing assistance. Thanks in part to a Dayton Foundation discretionary grant, we were able to purchase a refurbished pharmacy robot that helps FRHC improve access to low-cost medications, address staffing challenges for a hard-to-fill position and increase our patients’ usage of our pharmacy, with the hope that patients will take the medications prescribed. Additionally, our new Senior Resource Pantry, which was supported by the Foundation’s Together We Thrive: Del Mar Grants for Older Adults program, provides resources for our uninsured and underinsured senior patients who have needs that are not covered by their insurance. By creating an on-demand Senior Resource Pantry, FRHC will purchase items needed for our current senior patients and have these items delivered to their homes when needed. These items include grab bars, raised toilet seats, shower chairs, two-button folding walkers, four-wheel fold-up walkers, blood pressure cuffs, nutritional supplement drinks (i.e., Ensure), compression socks, hearing aids, hearing aid batteries, protective underwear, dentures and eye exams.
Many nonprofits today are facing funding cuts or experiencing a decrease in donations. What funding challenges are you experiencing or do you foresee in the immediate future?
With many changes occurring at the federal and state levels that impact our grants and our patients’ eligibility for resources, it has become even more important to rely on the support from our friends in the community. One of the funding challenges we currently face is the funding of our major federal grant, the Healthy Start Program, which provides over 1,500 pregnant women and children with supportive services and resources for healthy birth outcomes.
What are your most important needs right now? How can the community support them?
Five Rivers Health Centers’ most important needs are supporting departments and programs that continue to assist our patients in living their best lives, such as behavioral health, women’s health, transportation, interpretation services and support services.
Here are some ways that the community can support Five Rivers Health Centers.
- Support our transportation department at the new Xenia Campus to get patients to and from their appointments.
- Help provide financial assistance for patients as they go through curative therapy for sickle cell disease.
- Fund prescription assistance for uninsured and underinsured patients, which is currently 12 percent of all patients.
- Support the Patient Access to Total Health (PATH) Fund that helps existing patients complete the care they cannot afford or that is not covered by insurance plans, such as electric breast pumps, dental partials or ophthalmology appointments.
- Help to offset the cost of interpretation services, as currently our patients speak 49 different languages.
- Support the Healthy Start program that continues to help reduce the infant mortality rate and maternal morbidity rates within our community.
Donations can be made with your Dayton Foundation fund through Donor Express, or you may donate directly at www.fiverivershealthcenters.org. We are grateful for all support, large and small.