Dr. Judith Alvarez started La Clinica in 2016 to address the needs of immigrant women in the valley who faced multiple barriers to accessing healthcare such as language barriers and low income. Through its partners and robust staff La Clinica is able to provide education as well as healthcare. La Clinica’s office is located in the Third Street Center, a popular community hub. Here’s Medical Director Jenny Lang speaking from an exam room.
La Clinica started about seven years ago, and Judith Alvarez worked for Valley Settlement. And she taught the first cooking class with cooking matters and she identified during that cooking class that there were a lot of people who weren't receiving primary care. So she, with Valley Settlement, started a once a month Saturday clinic with a doctor out of Aspen Valley Hospital. He, I think he was here maybe a year and then he moved. She sought another doctor and that's when Dr Feinsinger came in and they collaborated. And the clinic just slowly has continued to grow. Dr. Feinsinger really focused on plant based nutrition, really trying to help people to reverse their diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, obesity, to improve their health.”
What started as a once-a-month clinic has grown over the years into an independant and thriving organization. In 2020 La Clinica moved into its current space in Carbondale to expand its practice.
We offer shop with a doc where you can go with Dr. Feinsinger and Judith Alvarez. And they go to City Market and kind of teach people how to shop City Market or a grocery store where you're focusing on the healthy foods and which aisles to not really put your attention to. And we also offer. cooking classes with a woman Laura Van Dusen from Rifle. And that's really cool, I think, for us, because it really brings the community together. A lot of times it's half Latino and half Anglo together. I think bridging that gap between our community is so important.”
La Clinica offers services in both English and Spanish, and its grassroots origins are what Lang says allowed them to quickly pivot last winter to care for the over 100 Venezuelan migrants that arrived in Carbondale.
“It's really scary to move here, not speak the language, not know the culture, the daily habits of life here. And, you know, I think the other tremendous barrier is the lack of access to mental health. So we're trying to bring on a new behavior health program here and gotten some funding to start the program, but that's huge. There are not enough bilingual, bicultural, behavioral health providers.”
La Clinica is working on expanding its already wide regimen of services. Health and peace of mind play a large role in physical and social well being, and Lang says behavioral healthcare is the clinic’s next step.
“So we got a grant, a mental health grant with a division out of CU Boulder called Rene Crown Institute, and it is to build a peer to peer mentoring program. So we will have, we will train people within the community, the Latinx community to be mentor to other people, to kind of help them with lifestyle habits, again, to improve their mental health.”
Thanks to the consistent growth and influx of patients La Clinica has plans to relocate to a bigger space with more capacity to serve its patients
“We're moving just across the other way, the Third Street Center, and we're building it out to be two clinical exam rooms, one behavior health room, a lab reception area office, and that hopefully will start in the next two months. So that's really going to help us expand our services, and allow that behavioral health program to continue to grow as well.”
Lang says La Clinica’s greatest successes come from the trust they build with their patients and the education that empowers them to take control of their health. Information about services and appointments can be found at laclinicadelpueblo.care.