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Margaret Flinter (born 1953) is an American community health, primary care, and nursing leader. Flinter is the Senior Vice President and Clinical Director of the Community Health Center Inc. (CHC), the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in Connecticut, and the Moses/Weitzman Health System. . She also serves as Chairperson of the Board of the Consortium for Advanced Practice Providers.

Early life and education
Flinter was born in 1953 in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Benjamin and Margaret (Sullivan) Flinter. She received her BSN from the University of Connecticut School of Nursing in 1974, her MSN in community health nursing/ family nurse practitioner specialization from Yale School of Nursing in 1980, both summa cum laude, and her PhD at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing in 2010. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Margaret is a former National Health Service Corps Scholar and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow.

Community Health Center
In 1980, Flinter joined Community Health Center, Inc. as a family nurse practitioner as part of her National Health Service Corps Scholar commitment. She has held progressive roles in the organization, first as a family nurse practitioner and primary care provider, then increasingly as an executive and clinical leader with local, state, and national engagement. During the 1990s, as CHC transitioned to recognition as a federally qualified health center and communities sought help in developing access to health care in their communities, the Center expanded to midsize cities across Connecticut, including New London, Meriden, Groton, and New Britain. This model that would continue over the following years and eventually bring patients to CHC from all over the state.

As CHC grew, Flinter led the development of new services, including maternity/prenatal, healthcare for the homeless, Ryan White HIV comprehensives services, a statewide pharmacy program, and served as Principal Investigator on dozens of major private and publicly funded grant initiatives, including the federal "H-CAP" (Healthy Communities Access Project), NTTAP (National Technical Training and Assistance Program). . Flinter was appointed by the state legislature to lead two major healthcare policy initiatives, the Primary Care Access Authority and the HealthFirst Authority between 2007 and 2010 and co-led the RWJ Foundation national LEAP initiative to identify and study exemplary primary care practices across the country with Dr. Ed Wagner.

CHC now cares for 150,000 active patients across the state from 16 comprehensive primary care centers (primary  medical care as well as behavioral health and dental care and some specialty medical care and continues its philosophy of "Wherever You Are" by providing care in 185 School-based health centers, healthcare for the homeless sites, and most recently via a mobile health unit.

In 2005, Flinter founded CHC’s Weitzman Center for Innovation in Community Health and Primary Care, now the Weitzman Institute, as the research and development arm of CHC, which has now expanded to include policy, education, and training arms. She serves as Senior Faculty of the Institute. She continues to hold a faculty appointment at the Yale University School of Nursing and was honored by Yale University in 2021 with its Jefferson Award for public service.

Podcast
Flinter and cohost Mark Masselli launched Conversations on Health Care on Wesleyan University's radio station WESU in 2009. The first guest was Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Over the years, the show has been distributed nationally on NPR, as a podcast, a video series, and through major news outlets in New York City and Washington, DC. Guests have included leaders in health care and politics such as Anthony Fauci, Mark Cuban, and Francis Collins.

Post-graduate Nurse Practitioner Residency Training Programs
In 2005, Flinter published the conceptual model and in 2007 launched the nation's first postgraduate nurse practitioner residency program. The model is designed to provide new nurse practitioners with the depth, breadth, and intensity of training to clinical complexity and high-performance integrated primary care in community health centers and settings service complex underserved populations. The model has since been replicated in numerous other health care organizations.

In 2015, Dr. Flinter was among an informal group of early innovators and developers of postgraduate NP residency programs to form the National Nurse Practitioner Residency & Fellowship Training Consortium (now the Consortium for Advanced Practice Providers). The Consortium was developed to advance the model and rigor of postgraduate nurse practitioner and joint nurse practitioner/physician assistant residency and fellowship training programs.

Publications
The Primary Care Nurse Practitioner

Approaches to Behavioral Health Integration at High Performing Primary Care Practices.

Training the Next Generation: Residency and Fellowship Programs for Nurse Practitioners in Community Health Centers.

Thematic elements of the postgraduate residency year and transition to the role of primary care provider in a federally qualified health center.

Registered Nurses in Ambulatory Care. Emerging new roles and contributions to team-based care.

Opioid Misuse Epidemic: Addressing opioid prescribing and organizational initiatives for holistic, safe, and compassionate care.

Critical workforce issues for registered and advanced practice nurses in integrated care models.

The Emerging Primary Care Workforce. Preliminary Observations from the “Primary Care Team: Learning from Effective Ambulatory Practices” Project.

From New Nurse Practitioner to Primary Care Provider: Bridging the Transition through FQHC-Based Residency Training

Residency programs for primary care nurse practitioners in federally qualified health centers: a service perspective

Awards and Recognitions
The Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein Unsung Hero Award, awarded by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, May 2023.

Yale-Jefferson Award, awarded by Yale School of Nursing, October 2021.

Connecticut Center for Primary Care Annual Outstanding Leadership Award, Farmington, CT. November 2016.

Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Connecticut School of Nursing. Storrs, CT. November 2014.

Inducted as Fellow, American Academy of Nursing (FAAN). October 2013.

Honored as one of Yale’s School of Nursing “90 Nurses for 90 Years.” October 2013.

Distinguished Alumna Award, Yale University School of Nursing. September 2012.

Carolyn Ladd Widmar award for outstanding scholarly research. University of Connecticut School of Nursing. May 2010.

Inducted as Fellow, American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. June 2009.

United Action of Connecticut Social Justice Award. June 2009.

Diamond Jubilee Recipient of the Doris Armstrong Award for Outstanding Contribution to Nursing Administration, awarded by CT Nursing Association. October 2008.