In the mid- to late- 1960s, Philadelphia, like many other cities, saw a decline in the availability of primary care for its residents. As a result, the Department of Public Health began to reorganize its District Health Centers in the city's most seriously impacted neighborhoods. In 1969, District Health Center #5 at 20th and Berks Streets in North Philadelphia was the first center converted to provide primary care as well as traditional core public health services. 

With the closing of Philadelphia General Hospital in 1977, the Department continued to expand the district health centers system into the current network of health care centers that provide primary medical care as well as traditional health services such as childhood immunizations, TB screening, sexually transmitted disease and HIV services. 

In 1949, the Philadelphia Public Health Survey was conducted by the Health and Welfare Council, Inc. at the behest of the Department of Public Health and the City Planning Commission. Its purpose was to provide information, guidance and recommendations to the City for its District Health Center program and the administrative functions of the Department of Public Health. It became the blueprint for the Department's reorganization in the 1950s. 

As a result of the Survey's recommendations, the Department of Public Health revised its organization and began to develop community health centers as a way to decentralize an administration which had become too large to effectively provide public health services in the traditional centralized manner.

The new decentralized system of local health centers allowed the Department to create a total health care program within a local community in conjunction with services already existing in the neighborhood. This concept utilized and coordinated all the health resources available to the community and provided the opportunity for effective working relationships between the City and private agencies. Emphasis shifted to the extension of health care to the entire family. As the health center was now community-based, it had the opportunity to develop and maintain relationships with families and be more aware of problems that might lie within them. 

The first consolidated health center opened in 1942 at 20th and Berks Streets in a renovated former police station. It was staffed, in great part, by African-American Department of Public Health physicians, nurses and other personnel. 

The health center at 41st and Haverford Avenue also opened in the 1940s. The Department's goal was to ultimately establish 10 consolidated health centers that would each house the traditional child health center, dental, chest and VD clinics. At that time, the Department's preventive health care efforts were mostly limited to the care of expectant mothers and infants and children. 

All of the Department of Public Health health care centers are fully equipped for radiology, laboratory and EKG services and have a pharmacy and social work staff on site. Centers are open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Approximately 85,000 Philadelphians make over 320,000 visits to the city's health care centers annually.