“Student Run Free Clinic provides a Remedy to Migrant Workers’ Health Issues in Beijing, China”, Founders of the Sunshine and Love Free
Clinic
The founders of the Sunshine and Love Free Clinic
in Beijing, China, will describe the incredible story of how they – six Peking University medical students working under tremendous economic, political, and social constraints – succeeded
in establishing the first and only known student-run free clinic in Asia. Since it opened its doors in Beijing in December 2010, the clinic has grown to include over 200 medical student volunteers and has served the health needs of over 100 patients,
including a large population of former farmers-turned-migrant workers emblematic of the problems associated with the vast urban migration in post-Mao era China.
“One Bridge to the Next”, Dr. James S. Withers
Dr. Jim Withers is a professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and the founder of Street Medicine Institute. He
is the initiator and global leader of the Street Medicine movement. Since 1992, he has been providing medical care to Pittsburgh’s unsheltered homeless population. Through an organization, Operation Safety Net, Dr. Withers makes house calls to the homeless
and envisions street medicine as a mission of mercy on a global scale. He has been invited to many different countries including Nigeria and China to promote the idea of street medicine. As an educator, he has built a “classroom” that would allow the students
to work in the reality of the alienated and excluded poor of Pittsburgh as a Street Medicine Fellow. Dr. Withers and his street medicine partner, Mike Sallows, who was formerly homeless, share the philosophical belief that bringing care to people’s own reality
will bridge the gap of care for those who are not able to or have no access to the health care system.