The New Freedmen’s Clinic first opened in the summer of 2009 and is a free student-run health care clinic affiliated with Howard University Hospital (HUH) and Howard University College of Medicine (HUCM). It gets its name from HUH’s original name – Freedmen’s Hospital. It is currently located in the heart of Washington, DC, within HUH.

After attending a course in Portland, Oregon on how to organize student-run clinics, a third year student at Howard University College of Medicine found overwhelming support from both students and faculty for executing her plan to form a clinic that would be run by HUCM students. The students at the helm of the project visited area student-run clinics to observe their management and provide insight on the work needed to make their clinic a reality. Soon after, the students applied to the Association of American Medical Colleges for a grant and received one in the amount of $30,000, which went towards starting the clinic. That grant was supplemented by a large donation from the Howard University College of Medicine Alumni Foundation, a $25,000 award from the Gilead Foundation, and an astonishing $150,000 gift from an anonymous graduate of the College of Medicine’s Class of 1941.

Each clinic day, there are two teams of medical students supervised by a Howard University Hospital physician. The clinic treats patients by appointment and those referred to them by the Hospital’s Emergency Department. The clinic accepts mainly adults and it now boasts a variety of screening tests, an expanding array of services, as well as a strong community outreach program to better address the needs of the underserved.