Student Health Coalition
The Student Health Coalition (SHC), also known as the Appalachian Student Health Coalition, was an organization founded at Vanderbilt University in 1969 to provide health care to low-income, medically underserved communities in Appalachia, particularly East Tennessee, and later expanded to communities in Nashville and West Tennessee. As students realized the scope of the problems of the people they served, the effort expanded into providing legal assistance, community organizing, and changing public policies at the county, state, and federal level. The goal of the SHC in the communities with which it worked was to organize community health councils, which could then raise funds to build and staff their own local health clinics. Background The organization was founded in 1969 by Bill Dow, then a medical student at Vanderbilt University, with the assistance of the former chairman of pediatrics, Amos Christie and a grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. After a year spent visiting a number of communities and speaking with local leaders, in the summer of 1970 six East Tennessee communities invited the SHC to visit and provide health fair screening services. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) donated use of their screening vans and personnel to run them. Two students