Community & Advocacy Health Care Service Opportunities

The mission of Addiction Medicine Collaborative (AMC) is to promote and enhance education concerning substance use, to promote and foster the interests of medical students, health professionals and advocates for substance use assistance and recovery and to promote scholarly inquiry concerning substance use disorders as they impact health care professionals and the public.

Visit the Addiction Medicine Collaborative

The American Medical Student Association is an advocacy organization for the interests and beliefs of the medical students of the United States, including advocating improved global health in any way possible. At Yale, AMSA runs a student blog that engages students to write about issues in global health and health policy and has a program that pairs health professional students at Yale with visiting medical students on rotations from other countries.

Visit the American Medical Student Association

CARE's research tackles chronic disease by focusing on social, environmental, and behavioral risk factors. CARE conducts longitudinal intervention studies in New Haven neighborhoods and schools, including cohort studies and randomized trials that are designed to measure, better understand, and help reverse these trends.

Visit the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement

The Columbus House is a shelter serving hungry and homeless individuals in the New Haven community. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, Yale medical, PA, and nursing students assist a local physician associate in providing medical treatment, consultation and screenings to the shelter's residents.

Visit the Columbus House

The Yale China Health Network coordinates regular trips to NYC Chinatown to conduct health screenings. If you are interested in Hepatitis B screening in Chinatown, you can volunteer at Charles B. Wang Community Health Center

Visit the Yale-China Health Programs.

The Global Health Interest Group is for students interested in global health issues, doing clinical electives abroad, collaborating with international students and faculty, and conducting global health research.

Contact the Student Global Health Coordinators, or add yourself to the listserv.

The HAVEN Free Clinic is organized by students from the Yale schools of Nursing, Medicine, Public Health and the Physician Associate Program. The clinic is dedicated to serving as a free clinic that provides uninsured adults in New Haven with primary care, wellness education, and assistance in securing health care. HAVEN aims to educate Yale health professional students about primary care and the value of working in health care teams; to allow students to gain experience in community health; and to expose students to the challenges of managing patient care with limited resources. HAVEN operates Saturdays from 9am-12pm out of the Yale Physicians Building.

Visit Haven Free Clinic or contact hfcrecruitment@gmail.com.

HealthCORE is an organization of Yale School of Public Health that seeks to work both domestically and internationally to promote the health of underserved communities. An annual international trip to Latin America for spring break is planned and organized through the year to provide public health education and other services. We also provide various opportunities to work in promoting health and well-being within New Haven.

Contact yalehealthcore@gmail.com or visit HealthCORE

The mission of IRIS is to help refugees and other displaced people establish new lives, regain hope, and contribute to the vitality of Connecticut’s communities. The IRIS Health and Wellness Program provides new refugee arrivals with quick access to quality health services, access to culturally competent and linguistically appropriate services, knowledge about preventive medicine, wellness topics, and management of chronic conditions, and an improved health care system that better supports their transition to becoming Connecticut’s newest residents.

Visit IRIS or contact the Volunteer & Acculturations Programs Coordinator at volunteer@irisct.org.

This clinic is maintained primarily by students attending the University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, and secondarily by students at Yale. The clinic travels to farms in Windsor, Middletown, Enfield and Suffield and elsewhere to provide health care to migrant workers. It was established in 1998 and runs from mid-June to October. Contact Information: Hartford County Medical Association: 1-800-541-5083.

More about the Mobile Migrant Farm Worker Clinic

The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale is the University’s principal center for teaching and research on international affairs, societies and cultures around the world. The MacMillan Center sponsors more than 700 lectures, conferences, workshops, and other activities each year; and produces a range of academic publications. Open to all graduate and professional students at Yale, the MacMillan Center sponsors the International Affairs Council's Global Health certificate.

Visit the Macmillan Center

The Program on Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses (PRFDHR) is an intellectual hub for research, teaching, and policy recommendations that takes a people-centered approach to the refugee experience – from internal displacement at home, to the transit experience inside and outside the camp, to challenges of resettlement and integration.

More about the Program on Refugees, Food Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses

Unite For Sight's Global Impact Corps is an immersive global health experience for students and for professionals. All volunteers participating in Unite For Sight's international programs are Global Impact Fellows. Global Impact Fellows participate daily with local doctors to eliminate patient barriers to care and to facilitate comprehensive year-round eye care for patients living in extreme poverty. They assist with patient education, visual acuity screening, patient intake, distributing the glasses and medication prescribed by the local eye doctors, and other important support tasks.

Visit Unite for Sight

The U.S. Health Justice Collaborative is an interdisciplinary student group created in 2015 to build upon the work started within the USHJ Course. The three main goals of the collaborative are to strengthen relationships between health professional students at Yale who are committed to domestic health equity; to deepen awareness about injustices that exist between patients and providers, between providers and other providers, and between health care institutions and the communities they serve; and to partner with the New Haven community to understand and contribute to advocacy efforts promoting health equity in the city.

Visit the US Health Justice Collaborative

The Wednesday Evening Clinic is the longest running student-run clinic at Yale, currently run out of the Primary Care Center on Howard Avenue. The clinic is in need of talented Spanish speakers to serve as interpreters for its Spanish speaking patients. The time commitment is just a few Wednesdays a semester and you can make a big difference in the lives of patients.

Visit the Wednesday Evening Clinic

YING (The Yale International Nursing Group) is a forum where all Yale nursing students interested in international health can join in discussions related to the role of nursing in global health care and work with like-minded students to explore opportunities to practice nursing internationally while at YSN and beyond. This group meets about once every month for general discussion and project organization, committees meet as-needed to plan activities and a subset of students also meets once monthly for journal article discussions.

Visit the Yale International Nursing Group