In Barryville, a New Community Health Center Takes Shape

BARRYVILLE, N.Y. – Along Route 97 in Highland, New York is a former medical clinic. It was run by Dr. Richard Daboul and his wife, Kathy, for over 30 years until Daboul retired – that is until now.

Highland Health Initiative (HHI), a flagship project from nonprofit Sullivan Health Access, soon plans to re-open its doors as a community health center for Sullivan County residents. After Daboul retired, the building was operated by Middletown Medical for several years until closing.

Christopher Dickey, a clinical global and environmental health associate professor and executive director of HHI, says that the current medical system in the county can feel like “a luxury for a lot of people.”

“The people in our community who try to make medical appointments have to wait six, eight, ten, twelve weeks to even get an appointment with a doctor if they’ve got something going on,” said Dickey.

More than a quarter of New York’s hospitals are at risk of closure, according to consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen. Garnet Health Medical Center – Catskills in Harris and Bon Secours Community Hospital in Port Jervis are among the at-risk hospitals in the state.

“If you follow rural health in the U.S., you probably know that most rural communities can’t sustain a full-time physician to be there, so Dr. Daboul was really one of the last of his kind,” said Dickey. “The financial model doesn’t work. There’s not enough patient volume to sustain it.”

Dickey and the Highland Health Initiative team decided to build something different: a community health center in the former doctor’s office in the Town of Highland focused on consistency and access.

He worked with Town of Highland Supervisor John Pizzolato and other community leaders to secure funding from the New York Health Foundation and New York state with support from New York Assemblymember Paula Kay. While HHI plans to primarily serve Highland residents, Dickey says it’ll also reach neighboring communities in Tusten and Lumberland in New York and Shohola and Milford in Pennsylvania.

But HHI plans to be more than just a health center, Dickey says. Screening for individuals health needs will be a priority to figure out what residents need holistically.

“Sometimes, if we talk to people, we find that health may not be their number one priority but maybe food security or maybe paying their rent or maybe hearing from their grandkids or something else is a much bigger priority for them.”

More than a third of residents in Sullivan County are on Medicaid – which faced sweeping federal funding cuts with the passage of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Still, Dickey’s hopeful that the project can strike the right balance of having diverse revenue streams to maintain sustainability. “We’ve been talking with insurance companies about value-based contracts, so in other words, for us to get paid to keep people out of emergency rooms.”

The Highland Health Initiative plans to host a community open house later this summer in August.

Image: Exterior of the soon-to-be Highland Health Initiative location in Barryville, New York (Photo Credit: Kimberly Izar)