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Photo Vincent Guadazno
Patti Cozzi is being honored as part of National Community Health Center Week. |
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A continuing inspiration
Cozzi honored for helping to launch local community health center
By Elsa Allen
Banner Correspondent
PROVINCETOWN — When Patti Cozzi first arrived in this town more than 50 years ago, all she wanted was to feel the sand in her toes and enjoy a little bit of the Cape’s sea air. But, being one of only two nurses and with only two doctors in town, it seemed fate had a different idea.
Identifying Provincetown’s need for health care services at the time, Cozzi couldn’t let her skill remain idle, and her summer vacation turned into a working one as she began to provide greatly needed health services. It was Cozzi’s early work, establishing a drop-in health center that eventually became Health Associates, now known as Outer Cape Health Services, that today is earning her high praise. Cozzi’s efforts were formally recognized at their Aug. 7 meeting of the OCHS board of directors. She is being honored in conjunction with National Community Health Center Week, which runs from Aug. 5 through 11.
Cozzi, who was born in Illinois and earned her nursing degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, sees her work as being born of necessity more than anything else.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Cozzi began working with the large number of runaways and drug users that began appearing in town, people that Cozzi says were trying to get as far away from everything as they could, and Provincetown was the farthest they could go.
“We started before AIDS was in existence. We started with kids who were runaways with Quaaludes in their pockets. It grew from there,” she says. “Of course it had to grow to what it is today, there’s no way that it could not have.”
Now, 50 years and counting later, Cozzi has been named a lifetime board member, and she continues to work addressing the health care needs of the community.
“We do the best we can with what we’ve got,” says a modest Cozzi, who hesitates to accept too much praise without emphasizing that her work has, from the beginning, been a team effort.
“They may want to give me an award,” she says, “but there are so many other people who should stand with me hand in hand. God knows what I have done has only been the same as, and hand in hand, with other people.”
“We take care of the community of the Lower Cape, that says a lot. We’re in a spot where one has to take care of what comes in the door. We’re lucky enough to be able to take care of those people on a semi-emergency basis. We have grown in stature and improvements.”
In a press release issued last week, OCHS board of directors president David B. Willard had high praise for Cozzi.
“We are proud and privileged to serve with Patti,” wrote Willard. “She’s a continuing inspiration as we work to bring affordable, accessible health care to the people of this region. Patti’s passion for the Outer Cape Health Services mission manifests itself in so many positive ways, she keeps us all motivated.”
But it seems that it is Provincetown itself that has kept Cozzi motivated all these years. Her temporary visit became a permanent stay in 1963 when she married local artist and restaurateur Ciro Cozzi.
Over the years Patti Cozzi has seen the pendulum of the community swing as the population continues to grow and evolve. Her work in local health care has had to grow and adapt to meet these changes.
“It grows with the populace and it changes with the populace,” she says. “As the tide goes in and the tide goes out, people come and they leave, there are the summer folks and the winter folks. It’s the changing of the tides all the time. One feels that there is a wonderful energy that goes along with that. It’s exciting to live here. There is nothing static about Provincetown.”
Now, at the age of 81, not content to rest on her laurels, Cozzi says she still has things to do. She continues to work tirelessly not only to improve the services offered at OCHS, but to disseminate information to the community about what is here for them.
“What is really important about this,” she says, “nevermind about the person, is the information the people must have about OCH. It’s a not-for-profit organization. We take care of anyone who can pay, anyone who can’t pay — we’re there for people who need us.”
Cozzi says that with the regularly increasing number of new residents, there may be people who don’t know that there are such services offered in town. When all is said and done, however, Cozzi says that her life in Provincetown and the work that she has done here, while different from she might have imagined her life would turn out, have proven to be nothing but thrilling.
“No one that lives here is what you would call ordinary, and it’s a pleasure to be here that’s part of the fun. It’s the whales and the coming and going of the fishing boats and the backshore. It’s all very exciting. My life in Provincetown has been more exciting than a lot of people who have lived this long.”
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Aug 9th, 2007