Aims to open student health center at Greeley campus 

GREELEY — Students at Aims Community College and their families will have to wait only one more year for on-campus health care.

College officials have been planning a student health center on the Greeley campus for the last year, and they’re finally to the point where they will pull permits to begin construction next summer — and student fees or tuition will not be increased to pay for it.

Contractors will break ground on the $18.4 million building next June, and it will open in fall 2026 if all goes as planned. The college will partner with Sunrise Community Health Center to run the 20,000-square-foot clinic. Students and their families will have access to mental-health services, as well as basic dental and physical health care.

“We are really excited to partner with Aims. Many of their students are first-generation college students, many are receiving support to attend school, and their internal surveys and demographics reflect that many are the population who want services, are struggling with lower income, or want access to affordable health care, so it’s a natural partnership,” said Mitzi Moran, CEO of Sunrise Community Health Center.

Aims for the past six years has had licensed therapists on campus; in fact, Aims plans to hire more. The college will work hand-in-hand with the new clinic, operating out of the second floor of the two-story building planned for the greenbelt along 20th Street at 54th Avenue.

Larry Pakowski, vice president for student engagement, inclusion and success and chief student affairs officer, said the impetus for the program was focusing on students’ mental health given the strong connection between mental and physical health when it comes to student success.

“If you want to go one layer out, the number one referrer to mental-health services is typically the primary-care physician,” he said, “so we started to have discussions: Is there a way to kind of take out the middleman and put it front and center for students so that there’s access not only to mental-health care, which we have been doing, but also the primary physician care.

Sunrise had already been operating clinics with Greeley-Evans School District 6.

“It was kind of a natural evolution,” Pakowski said. “It will be kind of a one-stop shop for our students right here on campus that they can talk to one of our therapists, visit a doctor, get their dental cleaning, and the Sunrise clinic will also be open to students’ immediate family.”

Pakowski said Sunrise will hire five physicians to staff the clinic.

Aims has been working hard to be a JED campus, which is part of the Jed Foundation, a program designed to help schools strengthen student mental health and prevent substance abuse and suicide. Aims started the program in 2023 and will evaluate its program in 2026 for continued improvements.

Students and their families who use the facility will follow Sunrise’s model of payment. If they are on Medicare or Medicaid, there will be no change in how their care is paid; those with private health insurance will pay co-pays for their care, and those who do not have insurance will be able to pay for the care on a sliding-scale fee based on income, Pakowski said. 

Moran said Sunrise has clinics in the communities in which Aims is located — Windsor, Loveland and Fort Lupton — so if need be, students who live in those communities can get connected with those clinics as well.

College officials have been working with Aims’ student government association to ensure they are engaged in the decision-making process of the clinic.

“This is just a capital project for us not unlike any of the other buildings we have built,” Pakowski said. “We’re basically creating space for them to operate the clinic and then Sunrise will actually provide the personnel but also the resources to run the clinic.”

on Facebook on LinkedIn