Industry rehabilitation Location Haight-Ashbury Founded 7 July 1967 | Area served Northern California Founder David E. Smith Headquarters California, United States | |
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Number of locations Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California Website Haight Ashbury Free Clinics website Similar Berkeley Free Clinic, American College of Tradition, Betty Ford Center, Samuel Merritt University, Hazelden Foundation | ||
The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, Inc. is a free health care service provider serving more than 34,000 people in Northern California.
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Overview
The organization was founded by Dr. David E. Smith in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California on June 7, 1967, during the counterculture of the 1960s. As thousands of youth arrived in the city, many were in need of substance abuse treatment, mental health service, and medical attention. The clinic became the model for the modern form of the free clinic. The Clinics are currently composed of four core programs:
The clinics recently merged with Walden House an addiction treatment organization to form Healthright 360.
Rock Medicine
Through the benefit concerts organized with Bill Graham in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dr. Inaba and Dr. George "Skip" Gay created Rock Medicine with the support of Dr. Dave. In the spring of 1973, Bill Graham staged two consecutive Saturday concerts at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, CA featuring The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin. Bill Graham asked the Clinic to staff a "medical emergency care tent" during both concerts. These small stadium concerts, about 18,000 at the Dead and 25,000 at Led Zeppelin, evolved into Bill Graham's Days on the Green concert series. The "medical emergency care tent" became Rock Medicine, which is a branch of the Clinic that still exists today and provides medical care at hundreds of Northern California music concerts and events each year.