The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), awarded $28.8 million to 67 community health centers on August 9 to help them establish new health care delivery sites in medically underserved communities.  California led all states, winning 20 of the 67 grants.  These 67 grants are intended to build the capacity to serve an additional 286,000 persons annually through public and private non-profit CHCs operating new “access points” offering comprehensive primary and preventive care. They are just part of HRSA’s plan under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to build such service capacity and to remove barriers to affordable primary and preventive care in medically underserved areas and for medically underserved populations. A recent study by George Washington University shows that while the percentage of Massachusetts CHC patients who were uninsured was cut in half from 2005 to 2009 by the Commonwealth’s health care reform law, patients served at the Massachusetts CHCs grew 31 percent over the same period; and nearly 80 percent of the CHC patients said that they continued to depend on the CHCs for their primary and preventive care needs because those community-based facilities were convenient and affordable to them.