Students enable Clínica Martín-Baró to continue free health services in the Mission

By Natalie Leal

The bass of the music vibrated the floor of El Patio restaurant, which overflowed with students dancing their hearts out to the hip-hop, merengue, cumbia and salsa music spun by DJs late into this festive Friday evening in the Mission district. They danced to raise funds to save lives.

The fundraiser - “Noche de Fiesta Por La Salud” Clínica Martín-Baró (A Night of Celebration to Honor Health) - was held by Clínica Martín-Baró, a free clinic powered to a great degree by volunteer students from San Francisco State University and University of California San Francisco. It operates on Saturdays out of CARECEN (Central American Resource Center) in the Mission District.

“My family is a family of immigrants,” said volunteer DJ Mandeep Sethi. “I understand the immigrant struggle in this country. Illegal or legal, you still need a means to survive.” Sethi is an SFSU student who began helping the organization when he found out about Clínica through Felix Kury’s Latino health care perspectives class.

All members of Clínica have at least two roles. There are clinical positions for Saturdays, which include lab, reception, intake of patient vital signs, and pharmacy. There are also committee positions, such as fundraising and patient referrals, which is done outside of the clinic.

Clínica members meet every Monday night at SFSU to answer any questions on issues or concerns that arise. For the meeting following the Friday evening’s fundraiser, roughly 35 people showed up. Lucy Ramos, a coordinator for the fundraiser, said meetings usually have more attendees and that there are currently 58 active members involved in Clínica in total.

One of the students at the meeting was Jessica Aguilar, a 22-year-old SFSU alumna who serves as and as a receptionist for the clinic. Like many of the organization’s members, she became involved when she was taking Felix Kury’s Latino health care perspectives class. Class members are usually required to volunteer and help fundraise for the organization, and from there some students end up staying with Clínica and becoming very involved long after the class is over.

“Wanting to help the community unites us,” said Aguilar in reference to the students involved with Clínica. “We have a common goal for social justice.”
Clínica is the sole reason Aguilar returned to campus after graduating as a sociology and RAZA major.

“I need it in my life at this point,” said Aguilar, who dedicates 30 to 40 hours a week to the organization. “It keeps me grounded. Clínica becomes your baby. You try to leave and get sucked back into it. I didn’t feel the same without it.”

For many Clínica members, this organization becomes their priority. According to Aguilar, life for many members becomes a juggling act as they struggle to make their volunteering role number one, while maintaining full-time jobs, obligations to their families, and attend school on top of it all. Aguilar says it is difficult to find people who are really invested and invested for the long run.

Clínica Martín-Baró was created and established by two SFSU alumni, Dr. Caro Monico and Dr. Zoel Quinonez, former students of Professor Felix Kury. Two years after they received their undergraduate degrees and were completing medical school at UCSF, Monico and Quinonez began forming the organization with Kury in 2005.

“The idea was born between them two when they were at UCSF,” said Professor Kury. “Later the three of us began working together.”

Since Monico and Quinonez were attending UCSF when they started Clínica, the organization’s volunteers consist of SFSU students, UCSF medical students, and doctors affiliated with UCSF who oversee all of the medical students’ work.

According to Kury, the commitment among the volunteers has grown over the years. He says the dedication has grown because these student volunteers have the power to make their own decisions and do something that they have wanted to do their entire lives.

“People want to be a part of something bigger than them selves,” said Kury.

Kury said the volunteers who are committed to hard work can relate to what their patients are going through and view the patients that walk into the clinic as their own family. Kury even recalls instances where patients cry because it is the first time in years that a doctor cares for them and physically touches them. He said it is a daily sacrifice making sure patients are getting the care they deserve and are respected.

“Each year more students want to help as they learn that they have a stronger commitment to humanity and less to individualism,” said Kury.

Joaquin Barahona, one of three medical directors for Clínica, volunteers his time to this organization along with having his own private practice, which sometimes caters to uninsured patients as well. His role as committee medical director requires him to go to Clínica meetings monthly to share ideas or clear up any confusion among the volunteers. His other role in the organization is to go to Clínica on Saturdays and revise all the work of the medical students, while taking the opportunity to discuss medicine and health to the patients.

“It’s always very nice and encouraging to work with this younger generation and to see the student’s energy and readiness to help,” said Barahona, who says his reason for being in the medical field is to help the community.

Elizabeth Arnold, a 26-year-old post-baccalaureate student at SFSU, was walking through the Cesar Chavez Center and saw a flyer with information about Clínica. An aspiring doctor, Arnold seized the opportunity to become involved, having been in search of volunteer opportunities. Before she became a part of Clínica, she had to be interviewed by a panel of 3 members.

“This clinic is amazing because it’s about the community and everything is 100 percent free,” said Arnold, who says this experience has led her to pursue community medicine.

Arnold, who currently works in the lab or shadows doctors two Saturdays a month, believes there is a shortage of physicians who can relate to their patients.

“Patients will trust you more if you are the image of them,” said Arnold. “This trust is necessary in preventative medicine, so patients know what you’re telling them is for their benefit.”

Another post-baccalaureate student involved in Clínica is 30-year-old David Suárez. Along with monitoring the clinic on Saturdays, Suárez is the co-chair of the patient referral committee at Clínica, and does clinical research at San Francisco General Hospital.

Suárez became involved with Clínica two and a half years ago. His favorite aspect of Clínica is that it is a grassroots effort to empower the community through healthcare education. He wants to make sure that as the organization grows, it won’t lose that focus.

An immigrant from Colombia whose family applied for political asylum in the United States in 1991, Suárez stresses the importance of empowering the immigrant community through Clínica. He says that undocumented patients know they can come to Clínica not just for healthcare but also to share their experience.

“When it comes to medicine you have to take into consideration the cultural, political, social and economic aspects,” said Suárez. “Like when well-being becomes a second priority because of work. I learned about the inequalities and obstacles the patient population has to overcome and that it is possible to do something about it.”

Through the patient referral committee, also known as patient navigation, patients can be referred to other community organizations for medical issues as well as legal, labor, and dental services. This committee is also in charge of making sure patients get the kind of service they need such as being present at their other appointments and translating for them. Empowering its patients is one of Clínica’s goals, and Suárez says he has indeed seen increased awareness within the patient population on how to be stronger members of society.

“Clínica reinforced my decision to go into medical school,” said Suárez, who will be going to medical school starting this August. “It also gave me a better perspective and opened my eyes to the healthcare and social disparities that exist here in the United States.”

The patient referral/navigation committee is an essential part of Clínica Martín Baró. According to Priscilla Andrade, a 25-year-old SFSU alumna who is the navigation committee co-chair as well as a receptionist at the clinic on Saturdays.

“We set ourselves apart from other clinics by guiding the patients,” said Andrade. “The non-medical aspect is what I love the most.”

Andrade points out that if a patient needs to see a specialist after going to Clínica, there are many obstacles that keep this from being an easy process. Two main problems can be that the patients don’t understand the system and don’t know the necessary actions to take, and another is that they can’t afford that service.

Andrade says it is a big enough feat getting undocumented patients to go to the clinic, however, word of mouth brings in more patients and trust. She said that one needs to know the social aspects for why patients don’t show up.

Since the clinic is only open Saturdays, for example, it is very difficult for day laborers to go. Sometimes, patients’ phones will get disconnected or they are homeless to begin with so there is no way to contact them and follow up with them.

Andrade jokes among the organization’s members about how Clínica becomes their lives. As part of the patient navigation committee she makes phone calls from home to follow up with patients. She says she hopes she has made some sort of impact in Clínica, whether it is by maintaining a positive attitude or by lending a listening ear to the patients.

“If we’re not doing the job, no one else is doing it,” said Andrade. “If I let them down, I feel like I’m letting down my family.”

Most of Clínica Martín-Baró’s members, like longtime member Jessica Aguilar, agree that many of their closest friends are fellow members. They remain dedicated, some even years after graduating, to an organization that requires them to wake up early every Saturday morning at the end of a long week at work.

Volunteers hope more people will catch on and help Clínica reach new levels to become a staple resource in the Mission District through the continuation of fundraising and grant-writing efforts, but a big limiting factor is the need to find a larger space to hold the clinic. Something that all volunteers seem to have in common, however, is their awareness that even though they can’t change the world, one person can make an impact on another’s life by caring enough to show up with a smile.

“We do what we can with the little we have and we make it go a long way,” said Aguilar.