About the Clinic
Who Are We?
The Student-Run Health Clinic (SRHC), formerly known as Student-Run Free Clinic (SRFC), is an organization that was founded by medical students and opened in 2011 as a way to meet a need they saw in the community. Originally housed within Circle Health Services, we have recently partnered with Neighborhood Family Practice and have moved to a new location on Cleveland's West side.
Graduate students from the medical, nursing, physician assistant, social work, and dental schools at CWRU and the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine work together to provide high quality, compassionate healthcare to underserved populations within the greater Cleveland community.
What Do We Do?
Students work in teams of four to provide patients with medical care as well as relevant resources and psychosocial support. The organization gives health-professional students a clinical setting to learn the skills they will need in their professions and allows them an opportunity to collaborate with students from other disciplines.
The clinic provides acute care for patients, which includes routine work physicals, STI testing and wound care. The recent addition of the dental team members has expanded our services to include head and neck exams and cavity risk assessments. Students follow patients from admission to discharge and go over cases with preceptors in their respective practices. Patients can also be connected to health care at the clinic with the help of students and staff.
The organization is also involved in outreach programs in the community. Since January 2021, we have been functioning as a COVID-19 vaccine clinic, providing doses of COVID-19 vaccinations to Cleveland residents. Students also give health talks, volunteer at health fairs, participate in Medwish, and provide health education at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Justice Detention Center. These outreach programs give students multiple ways to get involved in the community and volunteer in non-clinical settings.
The Student-Run Health Clinic hopes to expand its services and the hours of operation thanks to a generous grant from KeyBank to expand health education services. The grant was responsible for the new health sciences campus that opened in 2019 and has also helped the Student-Run Health Clinic find ways to give more opportunities for students to volunteer and practice their skills with real patients.
In addition to providing care at the clinic and through outreach programs, the organization involves students through its board. Students from each school are members of the twenty-seven member board that oversees the operations of the clinic. Board members are also involved in donor development, quality improvement, public relations and fundraising for the organization.