Welcome to “Paying it Forward,” a monthly interview series made possible by Piedmont Health. In this series, we hear from the folks at Piedmont about the importance of community health centers – and why they chose a career in community health.

This month, Aaron welcomes one of Piedmont Health’s board members: Victoria Freeman, who joined the board as part of a four-decade career in public health in the Triangle.

“I started my career as a pediatric nurse in New Mexico,” Freeman says of what drew her to Piedmont’s mission, “and I saw what happened to children who didn’t have primary care: they’d end up in the hospital often. And I was in public health, so I recognized the importance of primary care – (and) of having a medical home, a place where you can go with all your health problems and know that you’ll be taken care of or directed to the right place for care.

Freeman first joined Piedmont’s board in 2009 and she’s been there ever since, minus a brief hiatus that coincided with the pandemic.

“The board is very participatory,” she says of their work. We have a quality committee, we have a finance committee, we have a community engagement committee. We meet monthly and we’re active participants in making the big decisions.”

And as a federally-funded community health center, Piedmont has a unique requirement for its board: at least half of the board members have to be Piedmont patients themselves. Freeman says that requirement not only makes Piedmont’s board better – it’s also a crucial component of the very philosophy behind the whole idea of community health centers in the first place.

“It started 60 years ago when community health centers started, because it was very much a community movement – (in fact) we still call community health centers ‘the movement,’” she says. “Community members often got things rolling for their communities to get health care. So we honor that by having community members on the board, because they bring a perspective that only someone in the community can bring. They let us know what they’re hearing. They let us know who’s had problems getting care. And they also let us know when things really meet their needs or don’t meet their needs.”

97.9 The Hill WCHL and Chapelboro.com are your headquarters for local news and local voices in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. Every weekday morning, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck chats with government officials, UNC scholars, business and nonprofit leaders, area musicians, and others in our community as they share their thoughts, their experience, and their expertise on the central issues of today. Click here to listen back to all of Aaron’s conversations – and tune in to “This Morning with Aaron Keck” at 7:30 a.m. on 97.9 The Hill to hear those conversations live.

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