Ringtown health center becomes STAR Community Health with Tamaqua, Lansford centers
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - Officials with St. Luke's and STAR cut the ribbon on the STAR Community Health center in Tamaqua on August 7, 2025.
TAMAQUA – St. Luke’s Miners Health Centers are now STAR Community Health Centers, a change officials celebrated with a ribbon cutting in Tamaqua earlier this week.
The centers in Ringtown, Lansford, and Tamaqua all bore the STAR Community Health name Thursday.
“In Pennsylvania alone, STAR is part of 52 Federally Qualified Health Centers that provide care annually to about a million people across the state,” Quynh Hicks, interim executive director of STAR Community Health. “A lot of these folks either didn’t have access to good quality care or couldn’t afford it so then you end up in the hospital and in worse condition than you are.”
“We’re here to continue promoting preventative care,” she said.
For the Shenandoah area, the Ringtown center on Shenandoah Road had been the nearest facility operated by one of the three major health networks in east-central Pennsylvania since St. Luke’s took over in 2018.
It has been in existence in some form since 1980 and has often been known as the Northern Valley Medical Center.
At times, it had been operated as a satellite of Hazleton-St. Joseph Medical Center and St. Catherine Regional Medical Center.
Dr. Gregory Dobash said he “never thought” it, his home practice, would be “a rural health center, let alone a Federally Qualified Health Center Look Alike.”
STAR Community Health began in 2019 and has locations across the Lehigh Valley and surrounding area.
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