The Betty Jean Kerr Scholarship Foundation provides tuition assistance and advocacy for highly motivated community health center employee’s, with exceptional leadership potential, who are committed to careers in community health and public health services. .
Application
To apply, click on the link below and print out the application. Return the completed application to our corporate location at 5701 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63112.
Or, Attach the completed application via email, and send to smerri@phcenters.com
WELCOME
This foundation, through the service and experience of Betty Jean Kerr, understands the importance of Community based Health Centers and the need for their continued efficient operation in our communities. To this end, we are committed to identifying and supporting, through scholarship and advocacy, those exceptional students committed to leading the next generation of Community Health Centers into excellence in health care delivery to the many medically underserved communities in the St. Louis Metropolitan area and across the country.
ABOUT THE BJK SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION
The Betty Jean Kerr Scholarship Foundation is a “not-for-profit” community based organization dedicated to the identification, support and development of the next generation of St. Louis Community Health Leaders.
Established in May 2007 to honor Betty Jean Kerr’s more than 30 years of community health service in the St. Louis area, the foundation is dedicated to providing scholarships and programs that will ultimately support students committed to the idea that “high quality health care, delivered with dignity and compassion, is the right of all people, regardless of life’s station or economic condition”. And we aspire to advance this cause through leadership and service in our local St. Louis Metropolitan Community Health Centers.
The community Health Center movement began in the mid 1960’s and was established under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which was central to the Johnson Administration’s “War on Poverty”. The Health Centers were set up as community-based providers of comprehensive primary and preventive health care for medically underserved populations.
Simply, they ere established as a tool to erase the disparity of healthcare delivery in America. And since their inception, Community Health Centers have become an important tool in bridging the economic gap in the provision of quality healthcare in urban and rural areas. Giving access to quality health care to medically under-served and under-insured populations that might otherwise go ignored.
This foundation, through the service and experience of Betty Jean Kerr, understands the importance of community based Health Centers and the need for their continued efficient operation in our communities. To this end, we are committed to identifying and supporting, through scholarship and advocacy, those exceptional students committed to leading then next generation of Community Health Centers into excellence in health care delivery to the many medically underserved communities in the St. Louis Metropolitan area and across the country.
OUR MISSION
To be the premier organization that develops and prepares a new generation of St. Louis Community Health leaders, by providing tuition assistance and advocacy for highly motivated community health center employee’s, with exceptional leadership potential, who are committed to careers in community health and public health services.
THE LEGACY OF BETTY JEAN KERR
Betty Kerr has been with People’s Health Centers almost since the beginning. And as it has grown, so have her responsibilities. Upon retiring, as chief executive of the nonprofit organization, Betty Jean Kerr People's Health Centers Inc., Kerr oversaw health care and social services to the medically underserved that now has an operating budget of over $14 million.
The center was started as a free clinic in 1972 by community activist and medical students in a storefront on Kingsbury and Des Peres in University City. Kerr joined them in 1975, and since then the center has grown to have 200 staffers, including doctors, dentist, nurse practitioners, and mental health counselors, at three sites.
Kerr celebrated her 25th anniversary as CEO, but she started gaining leadersip experience shortly after joining the center, when she was responsible for bringing Washington University students on board.
“I learned how to do management on the job. When I started, there were two full-time employees, including me, and one half-time employee. I was the director, the nurse administrator and the support nurse."
-Betty Jean Kerr
Today People's Health Centers provides dental, internal medicine, laboratory/X-ray, pediatrics, pharmacy and women's health services as wellas substance abuse counseling, mental health services, HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, and more. In addition, it provides health fairs, health sereenings and immunizations.
The center has about 35 physicians on staff. Last year, 35,000 patients were served by the center, which has its headquarters on Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis City and satellite offices on Manchester Road in Maplewood and West Florissant Avenue in Florissant. People's Health Centers has a revenue of about $10.5 million. It uses a sliding scale, based on income.
“Betty Jean Kerr Scholarship Foundation”
This foundation is a 501c3 corporation.