It started on Devon Avenue.

1986 · Devon and Talman

In 1986, Dr. Mehbub Kapadia opened a small medical practice at the corner of Devon and Talman, in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. On those blocks you could hear a dozen languages before lunch. Families from all over the world were building their lives in America, side by side, in a true melting pot.

People told him not to practice there. "It's a Medicaid population," they said, as if that settled it. He went anyway. It was his community.

What he found was not what they warned him about. He found working families. He found neighbors who looked out for each other, and a community rising. And he found the idea that still drives everything Prism does: healthcare works best when it is rooted in the community it serves.

The practice grows

Word travels fast in a neighborhood like that. The little clinic grew into a multi-specialty practice: women's health and OB-GYN, dental care, podiatry, optometry, and more, so a family could bring most of its health needs through one familiar door.

One location became more than fourteen across Chicagoland. Over the years, the practice cared for roughly one hundred thousand patients. The healthcare system around it changed a great deal in those years, and Prism changed with it, but the idea never moved: stay rooted in the community.

When Illinois needed us

When COVID-19 arrived, Prism did what it had always done, only bigger. At Chicago's United Center, Prism managed the high-volume vaccination drive-thru as a contractor for FEMA and the Chicago Department of Public Health. Across the state, our teams brought outbreak control, vaccination, and clinical support to more than 200 long-term care facilities for the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Those years taught us something we've kept: if care can reach people in the middle of a pandemic, it can reach them any day of the week. Read the pandemic story →

Today

Today the clinic has wheels. Prism's community-based workforce of more than 1,000 healthcare professionals, most of them from the very communities they serve, travels in mobile healthcare vans to schools, churches, parks, senior facilities, and neighborhood events in more than 2,000 Illinois communities: checkups, vaccinations, screenings like blood pressure and glucose, and everyday care. Most services are free.

Forty years later, we are still doing what Dr. Kapadia did on Devon Avenue: showing up where people already are, and treating them like neighbors. Explore our programs →