Meeting the need. A primary health care model for a community-based/nurse-managed health center.

Long before the World Health Conference at Alma-Ata, when 113 nations agreed to incorporate the concepts and principles of primary health care in their health care systems (World Health Organization [WHO], 1978), nurses were practicing primary health care. Indeed, such care has been practiced since the time of Florence Nightingale. Here, in the United States, the records show that public health nurses were involved in numerous primary health care activities in the early and mid-1900s (Fitzpatrick, 1975).