For the third consecutive year, a completely student-driven effort is bringing a two-day free medical, dental, and vision care clinic to Willimantic, this time at a new location.
Area residents can take advantage pop-up health care services through the ongoing partnership between UConn’s Medical Clinic Club and the nonprofit Remote Area Medical, or RAM, on March 7 and 8 at the Windham Senior Center, located at 1 Jillson Square in Willimantic.
Patient parking will open at midnight on Saturday, March 7, for the clinic, with doors opening at 6:00 a.m. as services are provided on a first-come, first-served basis – at no cost – with doors closing once the day’s capacity is reached.
Parking starts again at midnight on Sunday, March 8, with doors opening at 6:00 a.m. and the two-day clinic ending once it again reaches capacity.
Patients should plan to attend as early as possible to ensure they’re able to be seen. All services are free and open to the general public. No identification is required, and Spanish-language interpreters and providers will be on-site and readily available for both days.
Patients are limited to two services in one day, explains Cameron Costa ’26 (CLAS), a physiology and neurobiology major at UConn Storrs and the Medical Clinic Club’s current president and community host group lead, but patients are welcome to come back each day of the clinic.
“They can get medical and dental, or they can get medical and vision,” Costa says, “but they can come back the second day and get everything that they need for that weekend.”
The annual student-driven clinic is led by a nine-person organizing team that spends the better part of the year planning, organizing, and fundraising to support the effort.
This year’s free clinic marks the third occasion that the Medical Clinic Club has organized this event to offer no-cost care to those in need in the greater Willimantic area alongside RAM, which helps run the clinics. At last year’s clinic, 400 UConn student volunteers helped provide more than $142,000 in medical, dental, and vision services to 196 patients.
“RAM has been an absolutely great organization to work with,” says Costa. “They just provided over $1.1 million in free care at their flagship clinic in Tennessee. So, it’s awesome to work with an organization that clearly values free care and equitable and accessible health care for patients.”
This year, says Costa, the club chose to change the location of the clinic, which had been held at Windham Middle School in Willimantic during its first two years, to better accommodate patients and ensure easier access to the clinic.
“When we were dropping off food donations at some of the soup kitchens in downtown Willimantic, some of the people expressed that they would like to go, but either didn’t have a way to get there or that the walk would be pretty much all uphill and not easy,” Costa says. “So, we decided on the Windham Senior Center, because they have the space for it, they have the facilities to run a clinic, and the location is more accessible. It’s also right by a bus stop, so hopefully patients are able to get to the clinic a little bit easier this year.”
Student volunteers will also participate in a one-night call-back effort after the clinic, where they’ll reach out to patients from the clinic to help them arrange and organize any necessary follow-up care from area providers.
“We have a group of student volunteers, predominantly volunteers that speak Spanish,” Costa says, “and RAM will send us a list of all the patients that require some sort of follow-up care. And then we call them and make sure that they’re able to schedule those appointments, if they can, or try and connect them with resources to be able to get the follow-up care that they need.”
While volunteer registration for this year’s clinic has closed – each year, response from the UConn community has been enthusiastic, and the club has consistently met its volunteer goals months in advance, says Costa – the club is already organizing for next year and beyond.
UConn students interested in joining in the effort are encouraged to connect with the club through UContact in order to receive the most up-to-date information on volunteer opportunities, to become an active member, or to learn more about the club’s work. UConn students interested in volunteering for the next clinic are always urged to sign up early, Costa says.
The club is also planning for continuity in its operations, where graduating seniors on the organizing team, like Costa, have recruited a replacement for themselves and spent the last year training to ensure there’s no gaps in leadership.
“There’s always somebody from one clinic who is going to be teaching the next person who’s going to take over, then so on,” he explains.
For Costa personally, organizing the clinic – while stressful at time – has been a fulfilling and impactful part of his undergraduate journey.
“I tell everybody that has that this has genuinely been one of the greatest experiences I’ve had at UConn,” he says. “I feel like this kind of student-fundraised, student-organized initiative is just not common at a lot of universities. It’s a lot of work, and it’s very stressful at times, and it can feel very heavy, especially when we’re dealing with budget concerns or issues with planning. But when you get to the clinic, and see the patients going through, and see them receiving care, and hear just how important it is to them, it’s eye-opening to me just to see how impactful something like this can be. And then it’s even more fulfilling that I was able to be a part of that.”
