Hannah Wilson is pictured at Yakima Free Clinic Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, in Yakima, Wash.
The opening of the Yakima Free Clinic to patients in May was the fulfillment of a longtime dream of Hannah Wilson, a local physician assistant who co-founded the clinic and serves as its executive director.
Wilson moved to the valley with her husband, Adam, looking to find work outside of the South for a few years.
“It came down to here and Fairbanks,” Wilson said. “My dad grew up in Puyallup, but I had never been to Washington before.”
After moving in 2015, they quickly decided to stay long term.
Wilson’s first job in the area was working in occupational health with AnovaWorks, which offers care to employees of fruit companies in the area.
“But I really loved primary care and wanted to work in underserved medicine. That’s why I went to school,” she said.
She was a volunteer at Union Gospel Mission, and she eventually joined the staff. She worked there for seven years as a provider and clinic director.
“It set me up really well. I really got to learn how free clinics work.”
Yakima Free Clinic is a donation-based nonprofit clinic run by mostly volunteers. Its mission is to offer urgent, primary and specialty care to the medically underserved, especially the estimated 30,000 people that do not have health insurance in the county.
“It’s a very large problem that one clinic can’t fix by any means,” Wilson said. But it make a dent. The clinic will be able to see 7,000 patients at full capacity.
People with insurance may turn to a free clinic because they are on a waiting list or their copay is too high.
“There’s a lot of reasons why someone might need to go to a free clinic,” Wilson said. “We would never turn anyone away.”
So far, a majority of patients are monolingual Spanish-speaking migrant workers, who do not have access to insurance as seasonal workers.
Other federally qualified health clinics in the area said that there was a need for free specialty care, Wilson said.
The Yakima Free Clinic offers chronic disease management; behavioral health; orthopedic surgery; ear, nose and throat surgery; dermatology; and physical therapy care with Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences students, among other services.
Wilson said she hopes the clinic will offer occupational therapy, optometry and cardiology services soon.
Over 100 volunteers have come together to make it happen, providing care, maintaining the facility, greeting patients, and doing bookkeeping.
“Our patients did all of the yard work for us last year,” Wilson said.
Wilson grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, wanting to grow up to be a marine biologist or dolphin trainer. Her parents were both engineers, and convinced her to give chemical engineering in college a try. After an internship, she wanted to change course.
“I really missed spending time with people,” she said. While attending Auburn University, she started volunteering with a free clinic, and decided at 19 she wanted to become a physician assistant. She received her Masters of Science in physician assistant studies from the University of Alabama Birmingham.
In her free time, Wilson likes to ride her Kawasaki Ninja 650 with other motorcycling friends, backpack and hike.
“I thought mountaineers were crazy people when I first moved here. And then we climbed Mount Adams our first summer here. I was sold,” she said.
Her mountaineering hobby led her to become a member of Central Washington Mountain Rescue, a volunteer group that responds to search and rescue calls, often involving lost and injured hikers, hunters and snowmobilers.
“The last one I did was back during the flooding, we got called out to help rescue the folks on the islands in the river,” she said.
Read more on Yakima Herald-Republic
