La Clínica de La Raza, Inc. is located in the City of Oakland in Alameda County. It was founded in 1971 by a group of volunteers including doctors, community members, and students from the University of California at Berkeley. From its beginnings as a free store-front clinic, La Clínica was the only place to offer culturally and linguistically appropriate health care services to Oakland's Fruitvale District.
A revenue sharing contract from Alameda County in 1973 enabled La Clínica to grow and develop a stable financial situation. Other contracts and grants from local, state, federal and private sources soon followed.
In cooperation with the University of California, Berkeley optical program, La Clínica began offering eye exams and eye glasses a few days a week in 1974. Continuing its partnership with UC Berkeley, La Clínica opened Family Optical in the Fruitvale Station Shopping Center in 1999, which offers affordable eye exams, eye glasses, contact lenses, and other optical services 6 days a week, and ophthalmology services one day a week.
La Clínica's first satellite, the San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center, was established in 1977 as a free-standing, comprehensive clinic. From its inception, San Antonio targeted, and provided services to, all ethnic groups in the San Antonio district of East Oakland. In January 1984, the San Antonio clinic and La Clínica merged into one corporation. In 1987, La Clínica established an additional satellite (Clínica Alta Vista) to accommodate the need for confidential services by teenagers.
La Clínica continues to grow and add new programs. In 1991, La Clínica added an in-house pharmacy for patients. In 1993, La Clínica began providing services at Hawthorne Elementary School in the City of Oakland. Today, La Clínica operates five school-based clinics at Hawthorne Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School, Fremont High School, Oakland Technical High School, all in the City of Oakland, and San Lorenzo High School in the City of San Lorenzo.
In 2002, La Clínica began providing services in the City of Vallejo in Solano County by assuming the management of Redwood Family Clinic (now known as La Clínica Vallejo). In 2003, La Clínica opened up two more clinics. One is located in the Monument Corridor neighborhood of Pleasant Hill/Concord in Contra Costa County. The other is a 40,000 square foot medical and dental facility located at the new Fruitvale Village at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland. La Clínica also assumed the management of the pediatric dental clinic at Children's Hospital in Oakland in 2003.
In 2004, La Clínica began providing children's dental services in a dental mobile as part of a collaborative effort with several other Contra Costa County health care providers.
Today, La Clínica is the largest community health center in the San Francisco Bay Area serving more than 44,000 patients at 23 sites in Alameda, Contra Costa, and Solano counties.
Post Office Box 22210, Oakland, CA 94623-2210 Phone: (510) 535-4000 Fax: (510) 535-4189