CityStream returns from Seattle Center, where six weeks from now,
thousands of people will gather to receive free medical, dental
and vision services.
It's all part of the Seattle/King County Clinic, which spans
four days from April 27th to the 30th.
Recently, the world observed International Women's Day.
This year, the theme is innovation the technology for gender equality.
And one woman who embraces the essence of that theme
is the person who organizes this massive health clinic each year.
With us now is the project director, Julia Colson.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you for having me.
Julia, the pandemic put the clinic put a lot of things on hold over the past
couple of years, but it's back to full clinic is back at the end of April.
Remind us what's being offered.
We are so excited to be back after a three year pandemic hiatus.
In broad strokes, we offer free dental, vision
and medical care to people that are in need.
We also provide social services to help patients find resources
in the community that can help to support their continued care.
A lot of specialists there.
We're not talking about just a cursory visit with a doctor, but something fuller.
Correct.
We have quite extensive opportunities available.
So in dental care we have cleanings,
fillings and extractions depending on what the patient needs.
In medical care, we've got so many different types of service areas,
especially including some of the diagnostic imaging.
We've got laboratory services.
We even have chiropractic and acupuncture care for patients to be able to see.
And then in vision we offer complete dilated eye
exams as well as new prescription eyeglasses for people that need them.
So if a patient has a problem,
they're going to find someone to help them. Absolutely.
Do you have to be a resident of Seattle or King County?
And that's one of the misnomers of our name.
No, you do not have to be a resident of Seattle or King County.
The only requirement is that you get yourself here
and get in line to get a free ticket.
Usually when you go to a doctor or a dentist or the eye doctor,
you have to worry about that little thing called a co-pay.
What about at the clinic? Correct.
All clinic services on site are free.
No payment whatsoever.
We don't ask for any information about income.
We don't ask for any information about health insurance or not.
We just have you show up.
And if you have a need, we're going to try to fill it.
The professionals, the doctors and the dentist and the eye
care people and the interpreters, they all are providing services.
And you have general volunteers as well, but you still
this is a four day clinic as I understand. Yes. And you still need help.
Absolutely.
So the days that we tend to need help across the board
with general support volunteers
as well as health care professionals tend to be Thursday and Sunday.
We tend to see lower volunteer turnout on those.
So we really love to bolster those days,
definitely to be able to serve the patients.
We also have a high demand for dental and vision care,
and so trying to get as many professionals from those fields as possible
in to be able to support our patients.
General support side, we need people to do all sorts of things
from escorting to help register patients, but also interpretation.
They don't have to be medically certified, but we have usually about
35 to 50 different languages spoken in the clinic.
So we need interpreters to help them,
help people to navigate the clinic and some of the questions that we ask.
This is a big event.
You've held a number of them in the past.
Remind us the scale of the event.
How many people are actually being served?
Yeah, on average, we see about 3500 patients over the four days.
Finally, if you're out there and you need to avail the services
of a good doctor or a good dentist or a good eye care provider,
how do they find out about what services are offered and how do they sign up?
Sure, they can go to our website, which is SeattleCenter.org/skcclinic.
And there are fliers there, informational fliers for patients
and volunteers to learn how to participate in whichever way they choose to.
But for patients, what they will do is they will come to Fisher Pavilion
at Seattle Center on the day of, and they will get in line and they will
we will start distributing the free tickets for that day at 5:30 a.m.
And once there's a limited number of tickets each day,
So once those are gone, we'll stop distributing them
and people can come back on another day if they didn't get one the first day.
Julia Colson, who is project director of the clinic.
Congratulations on clinics past and good luck on the one coming up late next month.
Thank you very much.