The public health safety net is in crisis. A growing population of poor and unemployed patients, the skyrocketing cost of medicine and medical equipment, and severe government cuts in health care funding, have stretched the community clinic system to the breaking point. Many nonprofit clinics and hospital emergency rooms have closed, leaving entire communities without access to medical care.

In the past, emerging young leaders graduating from medical school would come into the public health system and recreate it for each new generation, despite obstacles such as these. Yet today, the cost of an undergraduate and medical, dental, optometry, or pharmacy school education has risen to historic heights. Young health professionals are finishing school frequently owing more than $300,000 in educational loans. They find that they cannot survive working in the lowest paying jobs in the medical profession – the community clinics, where most of the poor must go for their health care.

The MED Relief Program was created to help idealistic young doctors, dentists, optometrists, and pharmacists who want to devote their careers to serving the poor. The program provides debt relief grants to make it possible for newly graduated health professionals to accept jobs in the community clinic system and still be able to repay their educational loans. Uncommon Good partners with the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County to identify emerging young leaders in public health who need loan repayment assistance in order to be able to work in nonprofit clinics serving underprivileged communities.

Application for loan repayment assistance

MED Relief News

Find a map of clinics where MED Relief doctors, dentists, optometrists, and pharmacists work in Southern California, or visit: http://goo.gl/maps/AJ5Fb

View Medical Education Debt (MED) Relief Clinics in a larger map