HRSA is honoring three clinics with its 2004 National Health Service Corps (NHSC) Awards of Excellence:
 

• Bowers Center for Children and Families in Buffalo, Mo.;
• Holy Family Services Birth Center in Weslaco, Texas; and
• Westside Health in Wilmington, Del.

• Bowers Center for Children and Families – Clinical psychologist Sandy Bowers, a former NHSC loan repayor, provides services to the residents of this rural southwest Missouri community through her private practice.  Because most of her clients are Medicaid families, Dr. Bowers discounts and waives fees at her private practice when no other resources are available.  She also works closely with Head Start centers to provide mental health services to children and their families.
  
  
• Holy Family Services Birth Center – In January 2003, a NHSC-certified Nurse Midwife Scholar serving at the clinic, Diana Caplan, helped launch a program to increase the number of childbearing women receiving prenatal care in Hidalgo County, where a third of the 15,000 annual births occur with inadequate or no care.  Since then, the number of women giving birth with inadequate prenatal care has decreased by 8.9 percent, according to the Texas Department of Health.
  
  
• Westside Health – A HRSA-supported Community Health Center, Westside Health employs eight NHSC family physicians and nurse practitioners, as well as a dentist who is a NHSC Ready Responder.  The health center has grown from 22,288 visits and 5,700 patients in 2002 to 32,031 visits and more than 9,000 patients in 2003.