The two clinics were recently granted a total of $6.6 million in federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Of the $787 billion stimulus bill passed earlier this year, about $600 million will go to community health centers, in part as an effort to increase the use of electronic medical records.

Suncoast Community Health Centers will receive $3.7 million to expand services and Tampa Family Health Centers will receive $2.9 million to help build an 18,000-square-foot clinic next to University Community Hospital. That $4 million project is expected to create at least 15 construction positions and 22 healthcare-related jobs.

“We’re pleased because these are local jobs,” Rep. Kathy Castor told Tampa Bay Online. “Tampa Family Health Centers likes to hire from the neighborhoods where they are located.”

Tampa Family Health Centers currently operates eight clinics, including an urgent-care facility, as well as a mobile health van that provides services for homeless people in shelters and a dental van that provides services at Head Start programs and schools.

The federal stimulus funding will not only increase the amount and frequency of services available to local residents, but also will continue to support jobs in the Tampa area’s successful education and health services industry, which will in turn help to support the overall economy.

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area’s education and health services industry employed 173,900 workers during October, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is up from 172,100 workers during September and a 1.9 percent increase from last year.

At the same time, the area saw its unemployment rate decrease from 11.8 percent to 11.7 percent, following an increase from 11.4 percent during September. Despite the decrease, the area’s current rate was still higher than the national unemployment rate at the time of 10.2 percent.

The area had a total non-farm employment of 1,157,200 workers during October, down from 1,158,000 workers during September and a 4.8 percent decrease from last year.