"The Harris County Hospital District (HCHD) has been a safety net provider since its inception in 1965. Public Law 4494-N, which was approved by the Texas legislature in 1963, allowed counties to create tax supported public hospital authorities. Harris County residents passed a voter referendum creating the HCHD in 1965. To that end, the Texas Health and Safety Code established the HCHD as the Harris County agency supported by local tax dollars for the designated purpose of rendering preventive, medical aid, and hospital care to persons residing in Harris County, Texas regardless of their ability to pay. The first HCHD community health center was opened in 1965. In 2012 HCHD began doing business (d/b/a) as Harris Health System. The system includes 16 community health centers, seven school-based clinics, a dental center, a dialysis center, five mobile health units, a rehabilitation and specialty hospital and two full-service hospitals, and a homeless program. Harris Health is a teaching system for Baylor College of Medicine and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

In 1987, a coalition of community-based agencies, in response to the Stewart B. McKinney federal mandate designed to assure health care for homeless individuals, proposed a shelter-based program and in 1988 the Harris Health System - Health Care for the Homeless Program (HCHP) was funded as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). HCHP is the oldest existing FQHC in Harris County. HCHP provides health care to persons experiencing homelessness in Harris County and enhances communication and cooperation among the agencies that serve the homeless. Persons experiencing homelessness suffer from various chronic diseases, barriers to care including transportation and uninsurance, that HCHP addresses through provision of quality comprehensive primary care easily accessible to the target population. HCHP consumers have access to the entire comprehensive and integrated health and medical continuum of care offered via Harris Health. HCHP overcomes obstacles faced by the homeless by providing patient-centered care based on a sliding scale fee and by utilizing a service delivery model that provides care in clinics in homeless shelters and through mobile outreach medical and dental van units at other sites where the homeless congregate. HCHP provides health care, mental health counseling, podiatry, oral health care, laboratory services, substance abuse services, pharmaceuticals, case management, social services, transportation, and entitlement assistance onsite at ten homeless shelters and day centers and in other outreach locations."