Building New Clinics for the Marginalized as Public Care Recedes

It has been a perfect storm. Santa Barbara County’s unsheltered count has been rising. Santa Barbara County’s public health department recently closed its specialty clinics and released 7,000 vulnerable patients from its rolls. By the end of this year, Medicaid cuts will take away a quarter of a million dollars in reimbursements for medical treatments for marginalized populations. In the middle of it, Doctors Without Walls (DWW) has quietly enhanced their range of services ready to help the increasing numbers of the vulnerable impacted by the loss of resources. 

Founded in 2005, DWW delivers free, volunteer-powered medical care directly to the marginalized population in Santa Barbara County, meeting those in need where they are. Their highly trained professionals provide medical assessments, wound care, vital sign monitoring, and connections to mental health and social services with an emphasis on dignity and unconditional care. And, now, with the need growing ever greater, they have opened vital community-based clinics: a gynecology clinic, a dental clinic, a dermatology clinic, an eye clinic, and a Spanish-speaking clinic. All while other medical providers and services have been contracting.

“What can we do to help those we serve and our community?” says Maggie Sanchez, the organization’s founder and executive director. The answer has come in the form of new clinics and much-needed additional health resources.

Building Out, Not Cutting Back

The population DWW serves has stretched well beyond what most readers picture when they hear “street medicine.” They now reach the working poor, the undocumented, and families newly evicted into their cars.

“We’ve broadened the spectrum of who we are, who we serve,” Sanchez says.

Their clinics are a prime example of this. They are located directly in the communities they serve and are staffed by doctors trained in street and disaster medicine. The dental clinic operates one Saturday a month at the Veterans Memorial Building on Cabrillo Boulevard. The Spanish-speaking clinic runs on Yanonali Street, a few hundred feet from where day laborers gather every morning hoping for work. The gynecology clinic operates at the Women’s Free Health Clinic, which DWW runs with Transition House, absorbing what Planned Parenthood could no longer cover.

Almost all of this life-saving work is done by volunteers. In addition to the staff of volunteer doctors, DWW trains pre-health students under a rigorous one-year commitment. To date, over 1,000 volunteers have answered the call to serve. Some have returned years later as physicians or dentists themselves. In 2025, DWW’s volunteer doctors and students cared for 8,109 people.

On December 31, the Medicaid waiver expires. The next morning, DWW will be where they always are: in the parks, on Yanonali Street, at the Women’s Free Health Clinic at Transition House, treating all who need medical help, wherever they are, with dignity and compassion.