Established more than 30 years ago, the student-run interdisciplinary UF Equal Access Clinic Network provides free medical services to thousands of community members every year. Executive director Jack Figg, a fourth-year graduate student, oversees operations at four walk-in primary care sites open four days a week, offering adult and pediatric care. Specialty clinics also focus on dermatology, cardiology, psychiatry, and more. Anyone can seek care, and patients come from throughout Florida to receive help from the next generation of Gator providers.

Leading one of the largest student-run clinics in the country is no small feat. The job involves managing budgets, coordinating student volunteers and faculty supervisors, and caring for patients with vastly different needs, insurance, documentation, and languages. Figg, who is pursuing an MD-PhD and is passionate about finding new cures for diseases like pediatric cancer, said he knew from his beginnings at UF that the Equal Access Clinic Network was the place to be to learn leadership skills, practice clinical knowledge, and truly make a difference in patients’ lives.

“The Equal Access Clinic is a really effective team, and through that team we are able to accomplish way more than we could as individuals,” he said. “That experience of helping society’s most vulnerable is incredibly rewarding and open to anybody who’s willing to help.”

UF’s Mobile Outreach Clinic gives health care professionals the flexibility to deliver care to medically underserved and low-income residents of Alachua County. A renovated bus brings faculty and staff providers, supplies, and trainees directly to neighborhoods and rural areas around Gainesville, eliminating the transportation barriers many patients face when seeking clinical evaluation and treatment.

“You’re getting to practice being a provider, and that’s the only way to learn, to do it yourself — it’s essential,” said Megan Maguire MPAS ’24, who was assigned to the Mobile Outreach Clinic in December as a physician assistant student for her primary care rotation, where she spent hours with patients, providing a listening ear and learning about the importance of community resources and continuity of care.

For Krystal Glasford, MD ’24, volunteering with the Mobile Outreach Clinic was a natural extension of her work coordinating OB-GYN nights for the Equal Access Clinic Network. She has wanted to make a difference in women’s health ever since she and several of her friends had poor gynecology experiences as young women living in St. Kitts in the Caribbean.

Glasford, a soon-to-be OB-GYN resident at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, recalls that when visiting OB-GYN residency programs, interviewers were often amazed to hear about the Mobile Outreach Clinic and how volunteers bring free cancer screenings to women in the heart of Gainesville, streamline mammography services, and practice medicine in a way that maximizes limited resources.

“The Mobile Outreach Clinic gave me a new perspective about community service,” she said. “It makes sure people don’t fall through the cracks. I think all students should be able to see the care that the clinic provides and its importance to the community.”

In the Putting Families First program, health professions students affiliated with UF Health and the Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences nutrition program are assigned in groups of four to meet with individual families in the community and create holistic care plans. Medical students participate in the program during their first year at UF.

“Putting Families First is one of the pros of going to UF and having so many professional schools in-house,” said Joimishael Martin, a rising fourth-year medical student. “It’s integral to knowing what health care really brings, and I see the relevance of it now in my clinical years.”