Philadelphia health advocates urge city to fast-track 2 new Northeast health centers for an earlier opening

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A project to build and open two new city health centers in Northeast Philadelphia could take another several years to complete, but residents and community groups are pushing the city to fast-track plans and expand health care options sooner.

The city first announced the new centers, planned for sites across the street from the Frankford Transportation Center and on the Friends Hospital campus, back in 2023. They were presented as a solution to the area’s status as a “health desert.”

The city’s current projected timeline shows construction being completed in 2029 or early 2030, according to planning documents.

Now, advocates with the Coalition for City Health Centers are instead proposing an accelerated 24-month timeline for the Friends Hospital campus location, with the new opening date goal in 2027.

“We worked very hard to get this far. It’s been more than two years,” Mingchu Pearl Huynh, president and founder of the Northeast Philadelphia Chinese Association, said. “I feel very sad for families who need this health care so much.”

Huynh and leaders from other community organizations and groups delivered a memorandum Feb. 11 with their proposals to Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration and City Council members. It suggests the city take actions similar to those to expedite projects in the past.

Strategies include using state executive orders to accelerate permit approvals and jump-starting exterior construction of the site while others finish interior designs.

“We are no experts. The city knows what to do,” Huynh said. “But this is a tool we saw they’ve used in the past, and this is an important project. We deserve faster.”

City officials maintained that the project remains a high priority.

“Easy access to primary care is one of the best drivers of good health, and this investment in both health centers is what is required to address the long-standing access desert in that community,” Aparna Palantino, deputy managing director, Capital Program Office, said in a statement. “It is the City’s belief that both health centers are needed, and neither should be prioritized over the other.”

The Friends Hospital location will be a 60,000-square-foot facility featuring primary care and other health services. City leaders project that the site will handle more than 30,000 appointments per year.

A request for proposals outlining phases for vendor and contract awards, design and construction of the facility, shows a $45 million budget and a construction start date in 2027. It could take at least two years or more to complete, Palantino said.

A second, smaller, new health center is already underway at a vacant property across from the Frankford Transportation Center. That site will be mixed-use and also include housing. It is currently in the design and predevelopment phase while the city finalizes the project’s budget with its development partner, Frankford Community Development Corporation, Palantino said.

City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents District 7 in the Lower Northeast, said the health center “remains a top priority for me.” She spearheaded funding and regulatory approvals for the project in 2023 and 2024.

“The project experienced delays, but we are working closely with the health department and key stakeholders to move it forward,” Lozada said in a statement, adding that she has meetings with groups involved in the project in the coming weeks.

“My focus is on maintaining momentum and advancing it as quickly as possible,” she said.

For many community members and residents, the new health centers cannot come soon enough, said Adam Goldman, executive director at the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, a member of the advocacy coalition.

Wait times for new patient appointments at Health Center 10 in Rawnhurst, the only city location serving the Northeast, continue to be as long as 10 months.

“And that really limits folks’ ability to go to the doctor, get their prescriptions, go to specialists,” he said. “The health centers really provide very comprehensive care. So, this is very, very important for folks in the Northeast.”

City Health Centers accept patients no matter their insurance status, and provide sliding scale payment options to help people with low incomes who are uninsured or underinsured.

That’s been especially helpful for people who’ve lost their jobs and employer-sponsored health benefits, Goldman said. Advocates say they want city leaders to feel the same urgency they feel in expanding access to care.

“We know they care about this and so we really just want to see where they can shorten the timeline, where we can speed things up so that people can really get help as quickly as possible,” Goldman said.