HealthPoint Bothell Medical Clinic marked National Health Center Week 2011 (Aug. 7-13) on Thursday with Congressman Jay Inslee and King County Councilmember Bob Ferguson addressing how stimulus dollars and the Affordable Care Act are contributing to the local economy and health of communities. This year’s theme, “Celebrating America’s Health Centers: Serving Locally, Leading Nationally,” underscores how health centers deliver integrated care that targets health needs and saves taxpayer dollars.

Inslee received the 2011 Distinguished Community Health Champion Award from Steven Wish, director of public policy of the Washington Association of Community and Migrant Health Centers.

The award, according to Wish, is “For your leadership in Congress to strengthen America’s health centers, and to improve the nation’s health by providing high-quality health-care homes to the medically underserved.”

Getting people into clinics for affordable treatment is tops on Inslee’s priority list. Inslee said that he can relate to the stress that people are going through when someone in their family becomes ill. In 1973, he noted that his wife developed a lump in her breast and needed a breast biopsy. (The lump was benign.)

Bothell Mayor Mark Lamb was also on hand to introduce Ferguson and discuss the city’s connection with HealthPoint, which will be opening up a downtown location in the fall of 2012.

“As Bothell is changing and growing, and as our downtown is building that foundation, I’m incredibly proud that human services and, in particular, that HealthPoint will be a model facility,” he said.

Victoria Goetz, a HealthPoint board of directors member, said that a federal grant will allow them to move downtown into a new 12,000-square-foot facility, about twice the size of their current spot on Northeast 145th Street.

“We are extremely grateful for and proud of the federal health-care reform funding that is making the relocation and expansion of the HealthPoint Bothell Clinic possible,” she said.