Modeled in part after the 2006 – 2011 People Before Profit Healthcare Project, created in response to the closing of DC General Hospital in 2001, The People’s Pan-African Wellness Front (PPWF) is a community-based grassroots program led by Pan-African Community Action (PACA) to confront the health disparities impacting African/Black working-class communities in Southeast Washington, D.C.
Inspired by revolutionary legacies such as the Black Panther Party’s People’s Free Medical Clinics and the Cuban healthcare model, PPWF seeks to deliver immediate relief while organizing toward long-term self-determination and community control of health.
The initial phase of this program will launch in Congress Heights, focusing on a five-block neighborhood radius as a base for community organizing and service delivery.
The PPWF operates every 4th Sunday from 12-3pm at the RISE Demonstration Center. The program provides community members with blood pressure screenings, hygiene kits, contraceptives, hot meals and snacks, fresh produce, interactive fitness instruction, support workshops, preventive health information, and political education on revolutionary health models. Doctors and other medical professionals are on site to provide instruction and answer medical questions. However the program is led by trained volunteers and sustained by donations.
Whether you are a medical professional, know someone who works in healthcare, or are a community member without medical expertise looking to contribute to the wellbeing of their neighbors, join us.
D.C.’s healthcare system—like the broader U.S. system—is profit-driven, structurally racist, and deeply unequal. Black residents, especially those east of the Anacostia River, face higher rates of chronic illness, maternal mortality, and a life expectancy gap of more than 15 years compared to white residents.
PPWF responds to this crisis as a revolutionary survival program: providing practical services to meet immediate needs while building political power to transform the systems that produce illness and inequality.
In future phases, PPWF aims to expand its services into additional neighborhoods, scale up popular education, and anchor broader campaigns for Community Control Over Health. This initiative is part of PACA’s larger strategy to build forums for participatory democracy and develop a mass movement for people’s power.
Donate through Zelle:
Send Zelle payments to ifco@ifconews.org
Description: “for PACA”
Send checks to: Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization PO Box 92 NYC, NY 10031-0092
Memo: “for PACA“
Fill out the form below:
Where the form asks “Please use my gift towards:“
Please select “Specific group that IFCO acts as the fiscal sponsor for:” and enter “PACA“