This year is coming to a close. For our generation, it has been a year like no other, presenting challenges and events we would prefer never to experience. Overcoming the ills, anxieties and injustices we battle today, and creating a future that is bright-er, safer, healthier, and free from prejudice, is our ongoing and unfailing charge. The problems we face surely are among those that drove the legendary Dr. Jack Geiger to devote his entire professional life to issues related to health, poverty and human rights. As many of you know, Dr. Geiger founded the community health center movement in the U.S. in the mid 1960s. This week, at the age of 95, Dr. Gei-ger passed away, leaving yet another disheartening reminder of a year filled with so much of the uninvited and unwelcome. Reflecting on Dr. Geiger’s legacy today, I ask us all to consider what he might have said concerning circumstances and outcomes in our region, and about our storied organization, Affinia Healthcare. In every way, I believe his observations would have strengthened, emboldened and uplifted our minds and spirits. Perhaps the few statements that follow would have been among them.

• • I believe he would have reflected very favorably on the decision of Missouri voters to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
• • I believe he would have noted most respectfully the election of the first Black Congresswoman in this State.
• • I believe he would have spoken quite positively about the resilience shown in our vulnerable communities during this unprecedented time.
• • And perhaps most admirably, I believe he would have stood to applaud you –the compassionate, highly-trained, unselfish and unwavering caregivers at Affinia Healthcare, whose commitment to community-oriented primary care, and to help protect our patients and communities from harm brought by injury, illness and disease and the negative social determinants of health, simply is unmatched.

That is the message I want to leave with all of you as we enter the new year. Our staff, contractors and volunteers at Affinia Healthcare have proven without a doubt that in any year – and especially a year that’s been like no other – you simply are like no other!

A Very Safe and Happy New Year to All of You!
Alan O. Freeman, DMgt
President and CEO