Our History

In 1988 Maria Gomez, President and CEO of Mary’s Center, was working as a nurse at the District of Columbia’s Department of Health. There she witnessed a large increase in the number of Latin American immigrants migrating to the United States to escape war, poverty, and death. Many of the women had been raped or experienced other trauma in their journeys north. Once in the United States, these women often went without prenatal care because they had nowhere to go. Mary’s Center was founded that year to help meet the needs of these vulnerable women. Created with funding from the D.C. mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs (OLA) and the D.C. Department of Health, Mary’s Center started delivering bilingual health services to pregnant women and their infants in the mainly Latino areas of the city’s Ward 1.

Since its doors opened, Mary’s Center has grown from a small basement clinic that served 200 women a year to a Federally Qualified Health Center that served over 24,000 men, women, and children in 2011. Our array of services and our constituency have both broadened significantly since our inception. Using a holistic social change model, we provide comprehensive health, social, and education services to underserved, underinsured, and uninsured individuals in the D.C. metropolitan region as well as to newcomers from over 90 countries.

Between 1988 and 2011 our staff size grew from 10 to 250 and our annual operating budget from $250,000 to $25.8 million. In early 2009, a month after her husband’s inauguration, Mary’s Center was privileged to host First Lady Michelle Obama on her first D.C. community visit. Her empathy and sincerity left a permanent impression on the teens, children, and staff who interacted with her. It is no coincidence that all the seniors in our Teen Program present that day are now attending college.

Mary’s Center now has three locations--two in D.C. and one in Maryland. We also have a mobile health unit, the Mama & Baby Bus, which serves six sites in D.C.’s Wards 1,2,4, and 5. Our latest addition is a 28,000-square-foot space in a new, metro-accessible building at 3912 Georgia Avenue, N.W. The new site serves an estimated 11,000 people a year, twice the number seen at our Ontario Road facility. The new Georgia Avenue site allows us to broaden our patient base and reach out to new populations.

Our success in improving lives and strengthening communities, one family at a time, has fostered important partnerships and earned us many awards. We work closely with a network of service providers around the metropolitan region. We also collaborate with academic researchers on studies examining effective practices. To learn how we are preparing for the future, see highlights from our strategic plan.

Key milestones

• 1988: opened in basement at 1844 Columbia Road, N.W. 
• 1994: opened current headquarters at 2333 Ontario Road, N.W.
• 2001: expanded to new building at 1707 Kalorama Road, N.W. 
• 2004: became a Federally Qualified Health Center
• 2005: expanded headquarters at 2355 Ontario Road, N.W. 
• 2008: opened first Maryland location at 8709 Flower Avenue, Silver Spring
• 2011: opening of brand new site at 3912 Georgia Avenue, N.W.and started managing senior wellness center at 3531 Georgia Avenue, N.W.
• 2012: opening of new site in Prince George's County, MD, at 8708 Riggs Road is coming on January 31st