La Clínica’s early years—Esperanza Silva (left), Medical Assistant at San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center.
La Clinica Celebrates Over 50 Years of Service
La Clínica was born of the efforts put forth by a group of UC Berkeley students in 1971, and has been providing health care services to the communities of the East Bay ever since. The aforementioned students, aware of the gap in health care for lower-income populations, held a conviction: that every person deserves access to high-quality, culturally appropriate health care, regardless of their ability to pay. Influenced by the philosophies of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, these students and several community members worked feverishly to create a community-based clinic. They took action and established a storefront clinic in East Oakland. They called it, ‘La Clínica de La Raza.’
When La Clínica began in 1971, it was a small clinical operation with only a couple hundred patients. The staff was minimal, but the community chipped in to help the young organization in whatever way it could.
La Clínica has seen great expansion over the years, and now has sites in three different counties. In 2018 alone, La Clínica served over 90,000 patients. With the rapid increase in the number of patients, new services have been added to benefit the community, and additional clinics have been built to meet the need. La Clínica has 35 service sites to date.
This year, La Clínica celebrates nearly 50 years of service to the communities of the East Bay. La Clínica is proud to have matured, over its decades of ministration, into a leading healthcare institution renowned for providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services to diverse and medically underserved populations.
Our Locations: A Timeline