FREMONT, OH - Congressman Paul E. Gillmor (R- Tiffin) was honored recently by the Ohio Association of Community Health Centers and the National Association of Community Health Centers with the 2006 Distinguished Community Health Superhero Award. Gillmor accepted the award in front of the staff and guests of Community Health Services in Fremont, Ohio.
“This is a very meaningful award to me and I was very pleased to receive it in Fremont,” Gillmor said. “Fremont’s Community Health Services has been providing assistance to the Fifth District for many years and last September, I was glad I could help them. I learned then that the center, which normally receives federal medical liability coverage to provide services to the uninsured in my district, would not receive liability insurance if they assisted in the relief efforts on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. After pressing the Department of Health and Human Services, the Center was able to participate in the relief but it became obvious that a legislative fix was needed. Now, I am working on legislation to fix this problem once and for all,” Gillmor said.
Congressman Gillmor serves as a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee where he is a member of the Subcommittee on Health. Among his healthcare initiatives in the past year, Gillmor sponsored a law which was signed by President Bush to provide discount prescription drugs to children’s hospitals. In addition, Gillmor is a lead cosponsor of legislation providing federal liability insurance to community health centers in emergency areas. During a recent hearing of the Health Subcommittee, Rep. Gillmor questioned an official from the Department of Health and Human Services about the trouble in Fremont and encouraged his House colleagues to join him in passing legislation to ensure the problem does not occur in the future.
In Ohio, the Association of Community Health Centers represents 30 community health centers at over 100 sites statewide and provides care through more than one million patient visits. Collectively, community health centers are the largest heath care system in the nation. The health centers’ award honors Gillmor for “his efforts in the First Session of the 109th Congress on behalf of America’s Health Centers, the more than 15 million uninsured and medically underserved Americans who rely on them for affordable effective primary health care.”
