Ethel Lennox moved to Jerome Street in Dorchester in the 1940s and became concerned with the lack of good health care for the poor and working-class women of the neighborhood. Previously she had lived in the West End of Boston where she and her neighbors were dissatisfied with what they considered unsatisfactory care available to them at the well-established hospitals in the city. Ethel decided that what was needed was a health center to provide accessible medical services in a local setting. She solicited start-up funds and office space to turn her concept into reality. Her obituary in The Boston Globe declared: “Ever feisty and sharp-tongued, Mrs. Lennox was the driving force in the creation of the Uphams Corner Neighborhood Health Center and a major figure in the development throughout Boston of what became one of the nation’s preeminent neighborhood health center systems.” The new health center building on Columbia Road (pictured above) was officially named the Ethel W. Lennox Health Care Facility.
