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Our Story

Our mission is to create practical solutions at the intersection of vulnerability, migration, and health.

We envision a world based on health justice and equity, where migration is never an impediment to well-being.

People across the US are marginalized by our health care system because of language barriers, poverty, legal status, rural locations, and migration. Health inequities and structural racism impact the ability of migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers to access care when they are migrating, and when they first arrive at their new communities. Climate change and other emerging or rapidly changing forces may interrupt care or prompt health emergencies. 

 

Clinicians who serve these marginalized communities struggle to reach them, and lack the strategies, resources, and technical assistance to effectively remove barriers to ensure culturally relevant, linguistically appropriate, high-quality care is accessible.

Migrant Clinicians Network is transforming the health system to remove those barriers, connecting migrants, immigrants, asylum seekers, and other marginalized communities with care, and bolstering the clinicians who serve them. MCN develops practical solutions to the biggest challenges in migrant and immigrant health, supporting both clinicians and migrants directly, through six primary avenues:

Virtual Case Management The US health care system is built for patients who have regular employment, are geographically stable, are integrated culturally and linguistically, and live close to care. For everyone else, there’s Health Network. MCN’s award-winning virtual case management program for migrating patients is proven to be cost effective and to save lives. Since 1995, HN has served thousands of migrant farmworkers, hundreds of asylum seekers, and other migrants moving within the US, or from the US to 120 other countries. HN serves anyone who is migrating with any ongoing health need.
Virtual Case Management

MCN has a long history of providing training and technical assistance to all members of the health team who engage with patients. MCN supports all aspects of the professional life of a migrant clinician, including:

  • First-of-its-kind Spanish-language learning collaboratives specifically for Community Health Workers.
  • Peer group support for clinicians experiencing work-related distress.
  • National webinars on critical clinical skills needed to effectively manage and treat migrant and underserved patients.
  • Health center-wide technical assistance on how to support farmworkers.
  • In-person trainings for clinicians on pesticides and heat stress.
Virtual Case Management MCN is well known for its award-winning train-the-trainer curricula, ever-popular downloadable low-literacy comic books, and up-to-date, customizable materials addressing emerging issues from a clinician’s perspective and made with migrant and immigrant patients in mind.
Virtual Case Management MCN engages in numerous efforts to support hyper-local efforts to engage the migrant and immigrant members of the community who are so often overlooked and marginalized, particularly when it comes to health. In Texas, MCN has partnered with the Ventanilla de Salud to expand access to culturally relevant health information, services, and screenings. In Maryland, MCN was active in supporting the Vulnerable Populations Task Force throughout the COVID pandemic, and then amplified the promising practices coming out of the task force through webinars and blog posts. In California, PhotoVoice is giving migrant women and teens the opportunity to tell their stories through cameras. These are just some of the community engagement initiatives in which we are taking a lead.
  • Learn more about MCN’s partnership with three Ventanillas de Salud.

  • Read about the latest efforts of PhotoVoice.

Virtual Case Management MCN is proud of its Institutional Review Board – a rarity outside of academic spaces. Research teams can underestimate the importance of culturally competent approaches for migrant and immigrant research subjects. Since 1999, MCN’s IRB has ensured, in advance and by periodic review, that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect the rights, safety and welfare of human research subjects, particularly migrant farmworkers and other mobile, marginalized, and vulnerable populations. In 2021, MCN built an in-house evaluation team to better quantify and support programmatic efforts to train clinicians on issues of migrant health. MCN’s IRB and evaluation efforts are available to support external projects or research activities.
  • Learn more about and submit a protocol to MCN’s IRB.

  • For more information on MCN’s evaluation efforts, contact krico@migrantclinician.org.

Virtual Case Management Health justice is at the center of everything that MCN does. MCN has actively advocated in several arenas to improve migrant and immigrant health: workers’ rights and improved occupational health and safety standards including updates to the Worker Protection Standard and national heat stress legislation; immigration reform including support of DACA, removal of public charge, and border health initiatives; and clinical advocacy at international bodies including the United Nations on topics like tuberculosis.

Our Organization

Migrant Clinicians Network is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. MCN has been awarded the Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition, from GuideStar/Candid, is a Top-Rated NonProfit according to GreatNonProfits, and has a score of 100 out of 100 from Charity Navigator.

MCN is a global organization with more than 10,000 constituents. Our work is overseen by a Board of Directors comprised of frontline clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and academics with experience in and commitment to health equity. MCN employs a professional staff of about 50, based in offices or working remotely across the mainland US, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Almost three-quarters of our staff is bilingual or multilingual and many come from immigrant and migrant families.

MCN actively faces and combats inequities in its work, making diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) central to its strategic plan. MCN equips clinicians, community health workers, and workers with comprehensive training and technical assistance that is culturally competent and culturally humble.  MCN advances equity through language justice by offering educational webinars and written materials in both English and Spanish. Fostering an inclusive work environment starts by creating a safe space for all workers to ask questions, take risks, and be vulnerable with each other, this happens at MCN. Additionally, all staff are encouraged to participate in DEIA work groups. Professional development and promotional pathways to support the advancement of our diverse staff are identified. Each year, measurable goals in all areas of DEIA are set, and success and areas of growth are tracked. MCN is looking ahead and embracing a culture of DEIA that is deliberate and welcoming for their employees and all whom they serve.

MCN Staff and Board at the 2021 Strategic Planning Meeting.

Our Clinical Constituents

MCN serves a breadth of health professionals who provide care for migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers, and other marginalized and underserved people. Roughly two-thirds of MCN’s constituency are clinicians providing direct health care to migrants.  The remaining third includes individuals whose efforts, all or in part, focus on migrant health. Slightly over 50 percent of MCN’s clinical constituents are based at community health centers.  The remainder are based in other sites including hospital emergency departments, private practice, health departments, research institutions, and educational institutions. Our focus on the multidisciplinary team includes resources and assistance specifically for community health workers or promotores de salud. MCN constituents are located throughout the US and include international health professionals with an interest in migrant health.

Our History

In 1984, three dedicated clinicians met at the Migrant Health Conference in Padre Island. The three clinicians -- Willa Hays, RN from Northwest Michigan Health Services, Inc.; Gail Stevens, RN from Delmarva Rural Ministries; and David Smith, then a physician at Brownsville Community Health Center -- shared a sense of personal isolation and dismay at the lack of migrant-specific resources available to clinicians. In 1985, they formed Migrant Clinicians Network, a grassroots clinical network consisting of clinicians dedicated to improved health care for people who, because they are moving, are at risk to be lost to follow-up.

 

MCN Impact Report

The report outlines MCN’s remarkable efforts to support migrant, immigrant, asylum-seeking, and other underserved communities and the clinicians who work diligently to care for them.

Previous Impact Reports: 
2022 2021 | 2020 | 2019 2018 | 2017 | 20162015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011