Mission & Social Change Model

Our Mission

Mary’s Center embraces all communities and provides high-quality healthcare, education, and social services to build better futures.

Our Values

Mary’s Center believes the following values are essential to delivering high-quality services: 

  • Participant-centeredness: As an organization, we use our cultural competency and compassion to promote and celebrate diversity by placing the needs of our participants and community first.  
  • Accountability: We embrace our roles, take responsibility for our actions, and are empowered to take smart risks because innovation leads to growth.
  • Respect: We foster an honest and supportive environment free from judgment where all voices are valued. 
  • Teamwork: We actively collaborate by sharing knowledge and seeking input to effectively reach organizational goals.  

 

About Mary’s Center

Mary’s Center is a community health center serving over 65,000 people of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds in the Washington, DC metro area for 35 years. With an integrated model of health care, education, and social services, Mary’s Center offers each participant individualized care on the path toward good health, stability, and economic independence.

Developing our Social Change Model

We recognized early on that only caring for your physical health concerns was simply not enough. To put you and your family on a path toward good health, stability, and economic independence, we knew we had to look at every part of your life and offer the appropriate combination of healthcare, education, and social support. With this in mind, we developed our Social Change Model (SCM), which allows us to offer medical, dental, and behavioral health services for the entire family, along with social services and family literacy services – all under one roof.

The success of our model was further demonstrated by the final report of an evaluation that we solicited from the Urban Institute and analysis from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which explains how this integrated approach has been shown to make people healthier.

We encourage you to take advantage of our many services as we believe there is more than one way we can help you improve your life and health.   

To download a copy of the evaluation of our Social Change Model, click here

To learn more about how this integrated approach can improve your overall health and wellness, watch our founder and former President/CEO Maria Gomez describe the SCM in detail.