Pillars Community Health, the LaGrange-based nonprofit that resulted from the 2018 merger of Pillars and Community Nurse Health Center, celebrates its 100th year in 2021. A century ago, Community Nurse was formed – yes, there was a singular “community nurse” hired by the LaGrange Public Welfare Committee of the Child Welfare League – to provide essential health care for those in need in the LaGrange area.
Pillars can trace its roots back almost as far, to 1928, to agencies that have provided other essential forms of care – for those seeking to escape domestic and sexual violence, offering, child and family services and treatment for mental health and addiction.
Those fundamental missions remain at the core of the nonprofit, which offers integrated healthcare services to people and families throughout the west and southwest suburbs and parts of the city of Chicago.
It’s an indispensable link in a healthcare chain that is often out of reach for those seeking any of those wide range of services.
Recently, the agency recommitted to the Riverside area in particular when it purchased a moribund former physicians’ office building on Ogden Avenue just west of Harlem Avenue in Riverside, which it intends to renovate and operate as a healthcare facility, offering a more immediate and convenient location for its clients in places like Berwyn, Cicero, Riverside and Lyons instead of them having to find their way to LaGrange.
While many people living in North Riverside, Brookfield and Riverside will go through life without seeking the services Pillars Community Health has to offer, the nonprofit is an essential part of each community. We’d like to welcome their upcoming new healthcare facility in Riverside.
