Puentes de Salud (Bridges of Health)

About Puentes de Salud (Bridges of Health)

Puentes de Salud (Bridges to Health) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that promotes the health and wellness of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latinx immigrant population through high-quality health care, innovative educational programs, and community building.

Puentes de Salud’s (Puentes) mission is twofold: first, to partner with local Latino immigrant communities to build long-term prosperity by addressing immediate education, health, and social service needs. Second, to create a responsible learning environment for future generations of artists, advocates, educators, and healthcare providers to examine social justice and structural violence and to explore their impacts on the social determinants of health within a marginalized community.

Puentes was founded in the early 2000s in response to a growing Latino immigrant population in Philadelphia. This population increase was driven by the city’s economic expansion, which created job opportunities in industries such as construction and restaurants, and changes in U.S. immigration policies that facilitated the entry of immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Established Latino communities provided a support network that helped new arrivals settle in the city.

It was during this period that Puentes’ co-founders, emergency physician Dr. Steve Larson and obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Jack Ludmir, began noticing a troubling trend: many Latino immigrants were using emergency rooms as their primary source of healthcare and were not receiving adequate perinatal care. Between 2003 and 2006, Drs. Larson and Ludmir attended town hall meetings at local churches, engaging with the emerging Mexican immigrant community in South Philadelphia. These conversations allowed community members to share their concerns and ideas for improving their own health and well-being. Through these grassroots efforts, our founders realized that traditional healthcare models were insufficient to address the complex needs of new immigrants, and this insight led to the creation of a new health and wellness model—one that would focus on partnerships between healthcare practitioners and the community, while addressing the broader social determinants of health.

Fifteen years later, Puentes de Salud continues to be guided by these core principles of community-driven solutions, mutual trust, and long-term collaboration. We are committed to fostering shared power and respect in all our relationships with the communities we serve.