Every Saturday morning, a steady stream of people enters a back door of the Islamic Society of Vermont headquarters in South Burlington. They’re not coming to practice their faith but to seek care at a new health clinic.
The state’s sole mosque, a low-slung brick building on the corner of Swift and Dorset streets, is not where you’d expect to find a thriving medical practice. What is even more unusual is the way it operates: There are no insurance claims. No co-pays. No worries about unexpected bills. All services are free and available to the broader community, as well.
The Free Access Health Clinic officially opened in April but was years in the making, said Dr. Waqar Waheed, one of its founding members and a neurologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
The clinic was born out of the disheartening situation that doctors regularly see across the state: patients who show up to emergency rooms with advanced, sometimes terminal, illnesses that could have been avoided if they had received timely, preventative health care. In addition to producing unnecessary pain and suffering, such delays in treatment can create financial and logistical complications.
“We are clogging the entire system by delaying this care,” said Waheed, who is also a professor at UVM’s Robert Larner College of Medicine.
Offering free doctor’s appointments at the mosque every Saturday will not solve the systemic problems that plague health care, Waheed acknowledged. Still, it’s a meaningful way to reduce barriers for those who are uninsured or can’t afford the costs, even with insurance.
And, as the only clinic of its kind in the most populous county in Vermont — the state with the highest health insurance premiums in the country — it is meeting a critical need. Not only can patients find primary care doctors there, they can also schedule visits with a rotating roster of specialists, including dermatologists and cardiologists.
“I tip my hat to them,” said former state senator Chris Pearson, board chair of Vermont Healthcare 911, a bipartisan advocacy group trying to reduce the state’s health care costs. But, Pearson said, “what’s heartbreaking … is that we need it because the system is so broken.”
When you’ve got the right mission and the right goals, it draws people in.
Umair Malik
So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, Waheed said, producing a steady increase in patients, some of whom come from hours away. They’re cared for by a team of nearly 50 volunteers — including doctors, a practice manager, medical assistants, triage nurses and front-desk workers. The clinic has treated around 200 people since it opened last spring.
As health care costs rise and federal Affordable Care Act subsidies have evaporated, Waheed and the clinic’s new president, family physician Dr. Umair Malik, are expecting an even busier second year.
“We know there’s going to be a big struggle in 2026,” said Malik, who also owns a private practice, Blue Spruce Health, that operates under a model called direct primary care, which allows patients to pay a flat monthly fee instead of using insurance.
The nonprofit clinic’s seven board members are trying to figure out how to meet the growing need while adequately serving its current patients, many of whom return for follow-up visits. The clinic doesn’t treat children or provide psychiatric care, a policy that is likely to continue due to various constraints. But the volunteers are considering ways to increase the clinic’s hours and find a bigger space. For now, they are making do with a modest section of the mosque that the Islamic Society provides free of charge.
Patients, who can schedule appointments online or by phone, check in at a makeshift reception area. Off a narrow hallway, a small room bears all the trappings of a typical doctor’s office: an examination table, scale, eye chart and blood-pressure cuff. UVM Medical Center helped the clinic arrange malpractice insurance and set up its electronic medical records system. The hospital has also donated supplies such as surgical scalpels.
One of those scalpels came in handy recently, Malik recalled during an interview last month. Though the clinic doesn’t typically see patients who need emergency care, a woman had come in for an appointment and mentioned that her son was waiting in the car and had a sore throat. Malik told her to bring him inside and, during an exam, saw that the teen had an abscess in the back of his mouth. Malik was able to open and drain it using a scalpel — a quick and easy procedure that likely would have cost several thousand dollars at the emergency room, he said.
The clinic has also been a boon to Burlington resident Ana Saam, who sat in a folding chair in its small waiting area on a Saturday in December. Saam had lost her health insurance months before when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention canceled a grant that funded her job working in health equity and mental-health research. Now self-employed as a Spanish-language interpreter, Saam, who is diabetic, said going without insurance has caused major anxiety; even simple medical procedures required to keep her condition under control, such as blood work, are “super expensive” without it. The clinic provides Saam with free care and, with the help of donations, covers the cost of basic lab tests and helps her figure out the cheapest way to obtain prescription medication by using coupons and services such as GoodRx.
Another patient, Tammy Paya, did have health insurance, through Medicaid. After a bilateral stroke in August impaired her vision, mobility and cognitive functioning, the Essex resident said she faced a seven-month wait to see a neurologist at the UVM Medical Center. Through her adult daughter, Samantha, who is a member of the mosque, Paya learned of the free clinic and was able to get in for a neurology appointment with Waheed last fall. On this December day, she was there for a follow-up primary care visit.
Mother and daughter both said they were impressed by Waheed’s thorough review of Paya’s medical history. He noticed that one of the medications she had been previously prescribed for headaches was likely exacerbating her COPD, a progressive lung condition, and immediately took her off it. Waheed also provided a clear explanation of why the stroke had happened and what lifestyle changes Paya could make to avoid another one.
“I was so excited when I left here,” Paya said, sounding incredulous. “I finally got answers.”
“Normally, she gets agitated if she doesn’t like a doctor,” Samantha said of her mom, but Waheed is “definitely ‘Tammy approved.’”
It’s that kind of feedback that makes people eager to donate their time and expertise to the clinic, according to Malik.
“When you’ve got the right mission and the right goals, it draws people in,” he said.
That extends to volunteers such as Shaun Bennett, a data-entry operator by trade who checks in patients at the front desk a few times a month.
“The idea of this was so beautiful … I couldn’t say no,” Bennett said. “I haven’t volunteered for anything before, and this actually makes me feel fulfilled.”
A banner on one side of Bennett’s desk is the first thing anyone sees when entering the clinic. Printed on a photograph of a person gazing at a fiery sunset is a quote by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that reads, in part: “It is not utopian thinking to say that every man, woman and child should have access to health care as a right.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Medicine With a Mission | Health care is free and accessible at a new South Burlington clinic”
This article appears in The Wellness Issue • 2026.
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