Colorado City opens its first healthcare clinic in 10 years

Hey there neighbor, 

When JoAnne Zitting was growing up in a rural part of northern Arizona, she believed medicine was for “rich kids.” 

Colorado City, a remote town on the Utah-Arizona border, was without medical services for years. The town is known for its connection to Warren Jeffs, the now-imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Under Jeffs’ leadership, the sect fostered deep distrust of outsiders and often denied healthcare to followers as a form of punishment.

Now, Colorado City residents are building a community on their own terms with the opening of a new healthcare facility, where local residents have flocked after the closure of the last sect-run clinic in 2011. JoAnne and her business partner, Hunter Adams, run the clinic with the help of a $385,000 federal Rural Emergency Healthcare grant from the American Rescue Plan Act, and technical assistance from Local First Arizona.

“We like to say we are by the community, for the community,” JoAnne shared. “Resources were taken out of their hands, but because this health care is being offered from a culturally responsible place, they're taking their power back.”

When Creek Valley Health Clinic’s application for a $385,000 federal Rural Emergency Healthcare grant was approved — JoAnne and Hunter immediately put the funding to work for the community.

They bought supplies, like finger pulse oximeters for patients to use at home, vital sign monitors, thermometers, an EKG machine, and a suction machine for RSV treatment. They kept staff members paid during COVID and fostered an increasingly trusting relationship with community members who historically questioned modern medicine.

The most profound evidence of that shift is in the dramatic swings Zitting and Adams have witnessed in the community’s overall health. For a clinic that is playing catch-up on 20 years of undiagnosed and untreated conditions, Creek Valley Health Clinic is making an outsized impact. 

From 2020 to 2023, the rate of uncontrolled diabetes in the community has plummeted from 48% to 17%. The rate of controlled hypertension has more than doubled; screenings for cervical, colorectal, and breast cancer have tripled; and the rate of follow-up care for patients needing weight management support has dramatically improved.

“It has been, in my mind, such a pivotal starting step to the true regrowth in the community. I’ve seen it ripple out in so many ways,” Zitting said.

“We have a saying that sometimes the biggest ideas happen in the smallest of places,” Adams said. “We’ve created this innovative project that has gotten the attention of the Arizona Department of Health and they’re trying to replicate it in other communities. It’s really powerful, because we’re just this small little clinic in rural Arizona.”

This small little clinic is making big change in a local community, as are thousands of rural Americans across the country for places they love. Here at Resource Rural, we’re working to tell the stories of hardworking people who are putting federal dollars to work. 

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In gratitude, 

Resource Rural