Kathy Antunovich has high hopes as the new director of the NIU affiliated Tri-County Community Health Center in Malta.

“At Tri-County, we want to increase the number of patients that we serve each year,” Antunovich said. “We also want to make a definite contribution to the education of health care professionals who plan to spend all or part of their career in rural Illinois.”

Antunovich became the new director in July, replacing former director and co-founder Mary Uscian. She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from California State University at Los Angeles and a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Tri-County Community Health Center, which is affiliated with NIU’s Health Services, offers health care to the public and the NIU community for less, Antunovich said. Both centers are under the administration of NIU, but the Tri-County Community Health Center is also partly supported by private grants and donations from supporters, she said.

The center is also partially staffed with faculty from the NIU School of Nursing and is one of the clinical practice sites for undergraduate and graduate students, Antunovich said.

Before coming to the Tri-County Community Health Center, Antunovich was employed at the Cook County Bureau of Health Services, where she worked for many years in the bureau’s Ambulatory Health Network.

“I have a long-standing dedication to quality patient care, service to the community, education of health care professionals and research as a means of improving the lives of the people we serve,” she said.

One unique aspect of Tri-County Community Health Center, Antunovich said, is that they have bilingual employees to help accommodate patients’ needs.

“At Tri-County, we have bilingual employees in just about every area of the clinic,” she said. “From the providers to the staff at the front desk, it is one of my goals to increase our ability to meet the health-center needs of the Hispanic community.”