Every three or four months, the chairs and projectors are removed from the conference center at St. Anthony North Hospital in suburban Denver. In roll the privacy partitions, lamps, beds, tables and a few TVs.

When Trudy Barber learned a year and a half ago that she had advanced-stage breast cancer, she felt she had two options: "I could either rise up or spiral down in despair," said the 50-year-old Elbing, Kan., resident.

Seven years ago, St. Mary's Community Health Center in Savannah, Ga., opened in a 10-by-10-foot, curtained corner of a computer lab at St. Mary's Community Center, an outreach of St. Joseph's/Candler Health System.

The government is allocating grant money to improve health centers serving schoolchildren, and ministry members that run such centers are among the recipients.

The 466-bed Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, Fla., plans to add a five-story tower to its campus by 2016. The hospital will begin the $57 million construction project in spring 2012.

"Food for the soul." That is how Paul Rouleau describes the Spiritual Grounding sessions he attends regularly at St. Mary's Health System in Lewiston, Maine.

Hospitals' community benefit work has been coming under increased scrutiny in recent years, with the government and others asking tax-exempt health care providers to demonstrate that they understand and are responding to priority health needs in their communities.

CHA's President and Chief Executive Officer Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, was honored recently with leadership awards from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Sisters of Divine Providence — Marie de la Roche Province.

It's a busy Wednesday morning at the Alexian Brothers PACE Program here, as more than a hundred older adults arrive for their day at the center and make their way to their usual seats at dozens of large, round tables scattered around a ballroom-sized gathering area.