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It’s not your ordinary medical clinic. No doctors in white lab coats, and they don’t ask for your insurance information at the door. But for more than 30 years, the Berkeley Free Clinic has provided thousands of clients with basic health services. 

The clinic’s motto says it all: “Health Care for People, Not Profit.” The colorful sign over the clinic entrance at the corner of Dana Street and Durant Avenue features a dragon (an Eastern symbol of health and strength) twined around the physicians’ staff.  

In an era of increasingly draconian managed care, when California leads the nation in uninsured residents, the BFC is the antithesis of the conventional health-care provider. It is a collective, managed almost entirely by trained volunteers. The clinic provides services to anyone, no questions asked.  

“We feel that health care is a right, not a privilege,” explains Sairah Husain, a Cal undergraduate who coordinates the clinic’s referrals and information resources. 

That oft-repeated slogan summarizes the philosophy of a free clinic. The BFC has its roots in the same era as the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco. HAFC was founded in 1967 by Dr. Dave Smith in response to the seamier side of the Summer of Love, i.e., drug addiction and its attendant health problems. Similarly, the BFC started as a “street clinic” in 1969, ministering primarily to the homeless.  

Homeless people still make up a portion of the clientele, but only a portion. Students and low-income residents, people who are between jobs or waiting for their health insurance to kick in, all make use of the BFC.  

It’s one of the few places in the Bay Area that offers free dental services, and it is known throughout the area as a safe place to get anonymous testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. 

And it is known as a low-key place, where patients (”clients” is the preferred term) are on an equal footing with caregivers.  

Health workers may spend an hour or more talking with a client at the first visit. Most of the health workers are not physicians, but trained volunteers. The approach is non-authoritarian. Emphasis is on demystifying health care for the average person. “We really try to make the clients partners in their own health care,” says Husain.  

“There’s a lot of emphasis on education, on disease prevention and harm reduction. When someone comes in, we don’t just ask about their health – we try to find out what’s going on in their life that might be effecting them, any other needs they may have.” 

Certainly the clients on a recent evening seem comfortable with their surroundings. They range from a young woman in business clothes to a gray-bearded man in a trenchcoat, who has dropped off to sleep and snores gently from his chair. A female student in jeans and a sweater comes by to discuss a recent TB inoculation. She jokes with the medical staff, all lay health care workers about her age. 

BFC survives on a combination of government contracts, grants, and donations. Currently, there are about two hundred volunteers who work in various capacities. Seven “coordinators,” paid a nominal salary, manage the clinic’s seven different sections, from dental to medical to peer counseling.  

Many of the volunteers are UC Berkeley students interested in going into medicine or public health. They undergo a rigorous training process – three months of training at eight hours a week, followed by a minimum one-year volunteer commitment. Attrition is high – about half of volunteers drop out during training. 

Morgan Fitzpatrick is in her fifth month as a volunteer, working the front desk one recent night.  

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” she jokes. “It’s really changed my perspective on volunteering.”  

She is now re-evaluating whether she wants to pursue a career in medicine. In the meantime, she likes the real-world experience she gets as a volunteer. 

Medical professionals also donate their time. They include doctors, nurse practitioners, and physicians’ assistants. In keeping with BFC’s egalitarian nature, they are referred to as “shift professionals,” distinguishing them from the trained volunteers, but not denoting the usual hierarchy seen in hospitals. 

As a health care provider, BFC is clearly limited in scope. You don’t come here for heart surgery.  

The clinic doesn’t have the resources for emergency medicine or management of a chronic illness, and it sees only adult clients. That’s why an entire section of the clinic is devoted to gathering and sharing information, providing referrals to people who need more intensive or specialized health services.  

Still, the clinic continues to fill an important niche, doing its part to bridge the yawning gaps in America’s health-care system.  

The National Free Clinic Foundation of America, based in Roanoke, Virginia, estimates that there are currently some 300 free clinics in the United States, serving 1.3 million people each year. 

And the Berkeley Free Clinic is an institution with fond associations for the thousands who have trained and volunteered here through the years.  

Some have gone on to become medical professionals; many others have taken their commitment to social medicine into other professions. Many friendships and marriages have come out of volunteering at BFC. 

Sairah Husain sums up her experience: “It’s unique here in that it’s very egalitarian. You’re not being told what to do. I wanted to see the community, be part of the world – and I am.” 

The Free Clinic is at 2339 Durant Avenue. Hours of service are posted on a bulletin board there. To get information, call 548-2570 from 3-9 p.m. Monday-Friday or 4-8 p.m. on Sunday.