The Lifetime Achievement Awards are given to individuals whose careers have been distinguished by their dedication to improving Community Health Centers.
Dr. Neil Calman, President and CEO of the Institute for Family Health
As the President and CEO of the Institute for Family Health in New York since 1983, Dr. Calman has dedicated his career to improving access to quality healthcare for underserved communities.
His work has consistently focused on eliminating inequities in health and healthcare. Through community-led coalitions and special programs, Dr. Calman has addressed racism and discrimination, and their manifestation as racial and ethnic health disparities.
He has also prioritized supporting the next generation of healthcare providers. Under his leadership, the Institute has been successful in establishing health professional training programs in medicine, nursing, administration, and mental health. Dr. Calman helped to establish the American Association of Teaching Health Centers and serves as president of its Board.
Thanks to Dr. Calman’s embrace of technology, the Institute has become a recognized leader in using HIT to both identify health disparities among patients and to support high-quality care and timely service delivery.
Dr. Calman has been involved in developing and advocating in support of policies that advance the health center model of care and related training initiatives. Most recently, he has focused on advocacy through his tenure as Chair of the CHCANYS Public Policy Committee.
Dr. Calman’s extraordinary career embodies the core focus of Community Health Centers—a transformative vision of healthcare as a fundamental human right, accessible to all, regardless of ability to pay.
Mike Holmes, Immediate-Past Chair, NACHC Board of Directors
While Chair of the NACHC Board of Directors from 2021-2023, Mike steered NACHC with a steady hand as the nation confronted the COVID-19 pandemic that tested Community Health Centers like never before.
Holmes held other roles on the NACHC board, as Treasurer and past Parliamentarian, in addition to serving on the Finance and Health Policy Committees of NACHC — all posts which gave him a key role in helping to chart the future of Community Health Centers.
His leadership on the national stage caps more than 40 years in the health center field. During his four decades at the helm of Scenic Rivers Health Center he oversaw its growth from a single clinic to an organization that now serves 13,000 patients over 8,300 square miles.
In addition to meeting the increasing demand for primary care in northern Minnesota, Mike also saw the need for moving the organization to an electronic medical record and determined that it could be best accomplished through a network structure, which led him to join with Sawtooth Mountain Clinic and the Migrant Health Services to form a Health Center Controlled Network.
Mike has also been a constant advocate for health centers and their patients, in both Washington, D.C., and Minnesota’s capital. He has testified before Congress numerous times, advocating for a strong primary care infrastructure and the importance of investing in health centers as they are increasingly relied on to respond to public health crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to natural disasters and the opioid use epidemic.