UW student-run Al-Shifa Clinic in south Seattle aims to make health care accessible to under-served Seattle residents, while giving students valuable experience and the opportunity to make a difference within their community.

“It’s a team of 10 medical students and 20 undergraduates. … They’ve been the driving force behind the clinic,” said Tipu Khan, a fourth-year graduate student in medicine and the clinic’s board president and director.

Khan found the inspiration for the UW’s Al-Shifa Clinic at his alma mater, the University of California at Davis, where he completed his undergraduate studies. UC Davis has six similar clinics.

“The UW had no open student clinic at all,” Khan said. “We are following the UC Davis model closely.”

The clinic, housed in the Refugee Women’s Alliance in south Seattle, is free and open to the community. There is also a satellite clinic in downtown Seattle at the Casa Latina Dayworkers’ Center.

A faculty board oversees the clinic and a community board makes sure the clinic serves the needs of the community, though students primarily run the clinic.

“It’s all undergrad based,” said Ngoc Thien Nguyen, a pre-medical student and the director of undergraduate and volunteer services at the clinic. “We basically planned the whole thing, with help from medical students with [public relations].”

The clinic already involves students from public health, biology and nursing, but Nguyen said they would like to involve different fields, like the school of dentistry.

“We’ve been working on building a solid infrastructure,” Khan said.

Khan also hopes that more students from different disciplines will be encouraged to get involved with the diverse and interdisciplinary group.

“We’re pushing forward to meet this need,” he said. “We’re out here and we’d love to have undergrads involved.”

In five years, Khan would like to see the clinic get its own laboratory and imaging facilities and become a “permanent asset to the community.”

The name “Al-Shifa” means “the cure” in Arabic, and is a common name for clinics serving the underprivileged in India and other parts of the world.

The clinic is geared toward Muslim populations, Khan said, although everyone is welcome.

The biggest thing the clinic is addressing is what Khan called “cultural competency.”

“New immigrants from northern and east African areas feel oftentimes that people don’t understand the culture they come from,” he said. “[For example], a lot of women don’t feel comfortable with a male [health care provider].”

The Al-Shifa Clinic wants to provide these women with female medical practitioners so there are no concerns of indecency, Khan said.

To further its goals, the clinic is hosting an auction and dinner event Feb. 15, which will help raise funds for supplies.

The auction will also raise awareness of the student’s hard-working efforts at the clinic, Khan said.

“We’re out here and we’re doing this,” he said.

[Reach reporter Erinn Unger at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]