An American Experiment in Public Medicine: Community Health Centers and Mortality under the War on Poverty

This paper uses the initial roll out of the Neighborhood Health
Center program (NHC) under the War on Poverty to evaluate their
effects on mortality. We propose to use a unique dataset of grants
made by the Office of Economic Opportunity and information on
county level mortality generated from Vital Statistics data on the
universe of deaths from 1959-1988. This dataset allows us to use a
novel empirical strategy to control for a variety of potentially
confounding policies. Specific aim 1 estimates nationallyrepresentative,
causal estimates of the NHC program?s effects on
mortality. Specific aim 2 examines regional heterogeneity in NHCs
effects by race, age and cause of death.