Capital Area Health Network, the nonprofit organization that provides health care to area residents at seven clinics in Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Vernon J. Harris Medical/Dental Center in Church Hill with a gala 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, at the Science Museum of Virginia’s Dewey Gottwald Center, 1005 DMV Drive.

Keynote speaker for the event will be Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney.

The Vernon J. Harris Medical/Dental Center, CAHN’s first clinic located at 719 N. 25th St., is named for the physician and Armstrong High School and Virginia Union University graduate who returned to Richmond in the 1920s after finishing Howard University Medical School and opened a medical practice in the East End.

Dr. Harris died in 1965, with his daughters, Dr. Jean L. Harris and Dr. Diane Harris Marsh, both following his footsteps in the medical field.

Dr. Diane Harris Marsh, a former longtime dentist in Richmond, is the wife of former state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III.

Her sister, Dr. Jean L. Harris, was the first African-American graduate of the School of Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in 1955. She served as state Secretary of Human Resources under former Gov. John Dalton in the late 1970s and was a health policy adviser to five U.S. presidents. When she died in 2001, she was serving at mayor of Eden Prairie, Minn., the first African-American and first female mayor of that city.

CAHN provides a range of health services, including dental, pediatric and mental health care, and diabetes, HIV/AIDS and mental health services and medication assistance to patients, the majority of whom are uninsured and facing socioeconomic challenges that hamper their access to health care.

Tickets for the gala celebration are $100.

Details: CAHN, (804) 780-0840.