After 28 years, Huntsville Hospital’s Community Health Initiative (CHI) keeps finding new ways to improve lives across Madison County.

During a June 18 ceremony at the Dowdle Center, CHI awarded $600,000 in grant funding to help 10 local not-for-profit agencies continue their important work of caring for underserved populations including homeless and uninsured adults, children in foster care, and people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 

Going back to its founding in 1996, CHI has now provided $13.6 million in financial support to 53 different agencies that share Huntsville Hospital’s mission of helping those in need.

The 2024-25 grant recipients include well-known organizations like the Community Free Clinic, Arc of Madison County, HEALS Inc., United Cerebral Palsy and Kids to Love, along with some less-familiar names.

Clinica Medica Moscati, which provides low-cost medical care for Huntsville’s Hispanic community, is a first-time grant winner. Mayra Short, who founded the clinic three years ago with her husband, Dr. Thomas D. Short, said the $50,000 from CHI will help the “small and humble” nonprofit serve even more patients.

“We don’t have all the bells and whistles,” Short said, “but we get the job done.”

Thanks to those conversations, Clinica Medica Moscati patients now can see a wide range of HH physician specialists (neurology, neurosurgery, cardiology, orthopedic surgery, obstetrics-gynecology and pulmonology) at a reduced cost.

“Uninsured patients have difficulty accessing specialized care,” Short said. “We don’t ask for free care but we ask for affordable care, and that has been a game changer.”

Despite the clinic’s efforts, uncontrolled diabetes remains a rampant problem in the local Hispanic community. Many work in construction, landscaping and housekeeping jobs that don’t offer health insurance, so they avoid going to the doctor until they have a full-blown health crisis.

Short knows a woman in her early 40s who did not seek treatment for her diabetes until she was blind in one eye and partially blind in the other; she finally came to the clinic for help and is doing much better after getting an insulin pump.

The clinic plans to use its Community Health Initiative grant money to hire a full-time clinic assistant and part-time case worker. That will free up Short to spend more time on medical outreach to Hispanic communities outside of Huntsville, including a large Guatemalan population in Jackson County.

“The clinic is almost like a ministry,” she said. “These are very good, hard working people, and it’s our honor to serve them.”

This year’s Huntsville Hospital Community Health Initiative grant recipients are: