Haight Ashbury Free Clinic

In 1967, the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, the first free medical clinic in the U.S., was founded in San Francisco, CA. That summer, known as the Summer of Love, tens of thousands of people from around the country filled the streets of Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, experimenting with drugs and sex. At the time, Dr. David Smith, MD was directing San Francisco General Hospital’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Screening Unit and independently founded the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. Staffed with volunteer University of California San Francisco (UCSF) students, nurses, and faculty, the clinic treated 250 individuals the first day and 350 the second with illnesses, injuries, hallucinations, and sexually transmitted infections. In 1969, Dr. Phil Lee, MD became chancellor of UCSF and a member of the clinic’s board of directors, helping legitimize the efforts. In the 1970s, the clinic served many Vietnam veterans who developed a heroin addiction and received government funding. Dr. Smith was the first person recorded as saying that “health care is a right, not a privilege,” an ideology that influenced the free clinic movement to follow. Today, the clinic operates under the larger organization HealthRIGHT 360. Across the U.S., there are now approximately 1,400 free and charitable (sliding-scale) clinics, local institutions often run by large hospitals which offer free or low-cost primary care for low-income, uninsured or under-insured individuals.