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Medicine (2006-2014)
Tzu Chi in the USA
1989 – 2014

s the United States economy soured in 2008 and beyond,
the already significant need for Tzu Chi’s medical services
Agrew even greater as many individuals were left without
access to medical insurance or affordable healthcare. Having had
a decade of experience in conducting medical outreach events,
Tzu Chi volunteers were able to expand these efforts to reach even
more people in need. At the same time, Tzu Chi partnered with
more organizations with which they shared a common goal, thus
increasing the collective positive impact on the community through
collaboration.
In California’s Central Valley—the breadbasket of the nation—
Tzu Chi Fresno volunteers began holding medical outreach events for
uninsured migrant farm workers back in 2001, the same year that the
first mobile medical clinic was commissioned in Southern California.
Fresno received its own medical clinic van in 2008, followed by
another in 2010, and volunteers inaugurated their first permanent
medical office in 2012. With these new facilities and a dedicated local
team, volunteers continued to offer weekly clinic hours in Fresno
while driving the mobile vans up and down the highways of the
Central Valley to offer outreach events in remote communities at
least once every month. Just north of San Jose, volunteers in Milpitas,
California, also began offering weekly dental services in 2013.

Elsewhere, volunteers reached many communities through post-
disaster medical relief. After providing medical care to Hurricane
Katrina evacuees in Houston in September 2005, volunteers
continued their support of storm survivors with a weeklong clinic in
New Orleans in February 2006. Two years later, volunteers provided
medical relief to flood survivors in both Iowa and Bolivia. After the
major earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, volunteers from thirteen
states and several other countries served more than fifteen thousand
patients over two months of medical care in Port-au-Prince. In doing
so, they also motivated a team of local medical volunteers who later
held their first major medical clinic in March 2013—an event which
helped more than six hundred patients.
Meanwhile, collaborations with several other community service
organizations allowed Tzu Chi volunteers to make an even greater
impact. A partnership begun with Remote Area Medical (RAM)
in 2005 brought several large-scale medical outreach events to

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