A federal grant recently awarded to Fairview Community Health Center to boost its local response to COVID-19 means the health care provider will be able to retain staff, purchase personal protective equipment and possibly renovate its location on Natchez Trace Avenue.

“We are a safety net provider,” Fairview Community Health Executive Director Chris Keyser said, describing many of the center’s patients as either uninsured, Medicaid recipients or refugees.

“Our use of this funding is to enable us to be better prepared for this current pandemic and any future pandemic or crisis like this,” she said.

Fairview Community Health was awarded $727,415. U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, announced the grant award. Similar grants were awarded to health centers in Brownsville, Owensboro and Greenville.

It comes following passage of the federal CARES Act, through which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has provided COVID-19 response grants to health centers across the country. Guthrie voted in favor of the measure.

“Our health care workers are on the front lines responding to the coronavirus pandemic,” Guthrie said in a news release. “I was proud to vote for the CARES Act to provide additional funding for health care centers in Kentucky to keep our communities safe and healthy. I am glad to see HHS has awarded these significant grants to facilities in the Second District, and I look forward to continuing to working with my colleagues and with HHS to ensure that our communities have access to these important resources.”

Fairview Community Health is currently seeing a limited number of patients in-person and treating others through telemedicine. Keyser said the funding will help the clinic secure more personal protective equipment – such as masks and gloves – needed to test and treat patients with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

Additionally, Keyser said, the extra funding may enable the clinic to make changes to its location at 225 Natchez Trace Ave. Those changes could enable the clinic to offer drive-through service or other facility improvements needed to treat COVID-19 patients.

The center is considering plans for the funding, and Keyser said the center is required to make regular reports of how the money is being spent.

“They are earmarked for our ability to again maintain our health center capacity, our staffing levels and our role as a health care provider,” she said.

– More information about the clinic is available at fair viewcommunityhealth.org.