In late 2010, Knights Landing community members shared that their community had been steadily losing resources vital to its wellbeing. The first loss was the migrant clinic followed by the closure of the public park and the teen center. Afterward, the community clinic, CommuniCare, which operated from the Yolo Family Resource Center (YFRC), stopped offering services in 2008 because the small volume of patients was not enough to financially sustain the clinic. This meant that in order to see a doctor and purchase medications, many community members, mostly housewives with young children and the elderly, would need to travel 20 minutes by public bus to the city of Woodland. Woodland, also being the closest source of affordable & fresh fruits and vegetables, caused the limited bus hours to compound the obstacles to healthy living. For the farm workers that did seek medical care, the situation was an almost complete deterrent to accessing medical care, as they worked during the time that clinics in Woodland operated.
In reaction to this looming poverty and deteriorating social capital, a group of predominantly monolingual, Spanish-speaking, farm worker housewives and mothers surfaced as leaders. They formed the “Grupo de Mujeres” (Women’s Group) as a way to discuss and advocate for the needs of their community. In 2009 they contacted Juanita Ontiveros, a long-term protector of farm worker rights, who recruited UC Davis professor of Chicano Studies, Natalia Deeb-Sossa to the cause. In January 2011, the Knights Landing Community Engagement Project (KLCEP) was formed by Deeb-Sossa and UC Davis medical and undergraduate students as a means of using a community-centered approach to advocate for the medically underserved within Knights Landing. The KLCEP partnered with the UC Davis School of Medicine Rural-PRIME program, a five-year MD/MPH program focused on fostering physician leaders committed to serving the rural underserved. The KLCEP also partnered with the Yolo Family Resource Center and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. Together, they worked with Clinica Tepati, the long-standing UC Davis student-run clinic, to open its first satellite clinic in Knights Landing. In January 2012, KLOHC opened its doors and became UC Davis School of Medicine’s 8th student-run clinic
Every first and third Sunday of the month, volunteer undergraduate, graduate, and medical students as well as physicians and nurses provide free medical services to the medically underserved within Knights Landing. Still alive is the community engagement component that occurs through regular meetings with the Women’s group, town hall meetings, and focus groups with the community, which are critical to providing community-centered services.
Learn more at : http://knightslandingclinic.org/
Contact:
(530) 421-8061
Address:
9586 Mill Street Knights Landing, CA 95645