For Kate Nelson, the goal is humanity in health care.
A nurse practitioner born and raised in Santa Fe, Nelson argued speedy medical appointments scheduled back to back to back doesn’t feel good to anyone — not to patients and not to health care providers.
“The system has arrived to be one that feels inhumane in many situations where we’re being kind of churned through as patients and as providers,” she said.
A team of local health care providers and administrators, including Nelson, is working on a bold effort to sidestep some of the churn of modern health care: They’re planning to open a new free clinic in Santa Fe, known as Comunidad de Colores, funded entirely through grants and grassroots fundraising efforts and intended to provide adult primary care, substance use treatment and mental health services, as well as care disfavored by the current federal climate, like family planning and gender-affirming care.
“Wanting to build a structure that is less dependent on seeing as many people as possible in order to meet the bottom line is, I think, a big motivator for us,” Nelson said.
Clinic organizers’ “very ambitious goal” is to open to patients in June, said Dr. Kim Nguyen, a physician trained in internal and addiction medicine and one of the founding board members of Comunidad de Colores.
Once open, it will join Villa Therese Catholic Clinic — one of its key partners — as another of the very few free clinics in New Mexico.
As Comunidad de Colores’ name — meaning “community of colors” in Spanish — implies, the goal is to build a community within the clinic, said Myriam Salazar, a community health worker and harm reduction specialist who is also among the organization’s founding board members.
While medical care may be the foundation of the clinic’s services, Salazar said, “We do need a community. We need a place where people can come and feel free and safe to ask for help regarding their … health needs.”
Meeting a ‘primary need’
Comunidad de Colores is the result of about three years of planning.
The clinic’s four founding board members — Nelson, Nguyen, Salazar and longtime community health center administrator Christine Winfield — previously worked together at La Familia Health.
“The dream of doing an independent clinic like this has been one that has been in my heart for a really long time, and only with meeting and being able to work with people like Christine, Kim and Myriam and our board … has been what’s made it possible,” Nelson said.
When it opens to patients in 2026, Comunidad de Colores will provide a broad spectrum of care to meet “a person’s primary need,” Nguyen said. That includes adult primary care visits, routine mental health monitoring, and treatment and prevention for diseases like hepatitis C and HIV.
Salazar added the clinic will also offer medications to begin substance use treatment and equipment to reduce the potential for harm during drug use, like clean needles and the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Part of Salazar’s job, meanwhile, will be to help identify related social needs and make proper referrals for help with basics, like housing, food and transportation.
“We need to remember that we as human beings are not just flesh,” Salazar said. “We have a brain, we have feelings, we have spirit — all parts to take care of.”
The clinic will also offer medication-based gender-affirming care for people who don’t identify with their gender assigned at birth as well as family planning services like birth control, medication abortion and long-acting reversible contraception.
Nelson and Nguyen will be the clinic’s first health care providers.
Who pays for a free clinic? Comunidad de Colores founders plan to raise that money through grassroots fundraising and private grants, with a grassroots fundraising goal of $150,000 and a total fundraising goal of $350,000 before June.
It’s an ambitious goal, they admitted — especially amid terminated federal health care funding, major cuts to Medicaid, skyrocketing health insurance costs and intense pressure on private foundations.
“It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be constant,” Winfield said of the clinic’s fundraising efforts.
President Donald Trump’s second term has brought unprecedented turmoil in federal funding, with millions in public health grant funding slashed in the name of government efficiency — some of which has since been restored.
A report commissioned by the Thornburg Foundation, Anchorum Health Foundation and Santa Fe Community Foundation forecast a challenging future for New Mexico’s nonprofit sector — jobs that provide a total of 8% of the state’s private workforce, including nonprofit health care providers — as Trump administration cuts dry up federal grants for such organizations.
As nonprofits lose federal grant funding and search for private dollars to offset their losses, philanthropic funders will feel the squeeze, too. The report estimated foundations would have to increase their giving by 282% to replace terminated federal grants.
Meanwhile, major cuts to Medicaid — set to start taking effect in late 2026 and continue through 2034 under a federal budget reconciliation signed into law in July — and soaring health insurance premiums are likely to result in more uninsured New Mexicans, one of the primary demographic groups Comunidad de Colores aims to serve.
The state Health Care Authority, which administers Medicaid in New Mexico, estimates at least 88,530 New Mexico residents will permanently lose coverage under the federal reconciliation law.
While more uninsured New Mexicans will increase demand for Comunidad de Colores’ services, the free clinic will not be as dependent on traditional health insurance payments or federal grants as other providers, Nelson explained.
But, she added, “This is a time where most of philanthropy has pulled back on their generous giving.” The free clinic’s founders are aware of shrinking or disappearing grants from private foundations.
And yet, in recent weeks of grassroots fundraising, Santa Fe residents have shown their support.
“The moment’s hard, but we also feel like the moment’s open right now — because people are wanting to make a difference,” Winfield said.
Villa Therese partnership
There’s no sense of competition between Villa Therese Catholic Clinic and Comunidad de Colores.
Rather, the two clinics will work together as close partners, with Villa Therese sharing its space with Comunidad de Colores and helping the new clinic build its patient care capacity, said Villa Therese Executive Director Mark McDonald.
“We are both very steadfast in our pursuit of equity and access for everyone — and that creates a great foundation for a partnership,” he said. “It’s wonderful that Villa Therese is not going to be the only … free clinic of providers in the state of New Mexico.”
Villa Therese’s Hopewell Street clinic, which provides medical, dental and eye care at no cost to patients, has seen a surge of demand in recent years, and it just can’t meet everybody’s needs, McDonald said.
“We would love to be able to serve all the patients, but there are just too many of them who can’t afford health care,” he said.
Villa Therese will share its 32,000-square-foot facility with Comunidad de Colores, an arrangement that will allow staff at both clinics to learn from each other, McDonald said. Nguyen and Nelson are already volunteering to provide care for Villa Therese patients.
Comunidad de Colores will help Villa Therese, too. The existing clinic was designed to help fill emergent gaps in care, McDonald said: Villa Therese’s volunteer providers screen patients before treating their ailments in-house or referring them to specialists — but they can’t offer consistent visits with a primary care provider.
Comunidad de Colores, meanwhile, will be suited to provide primary care services, including to Villa Therese patients.
McDonald said the new free clinic will endeavor to provide services that his experience at Villa Therese shows are in high demand.
“Kudos and congratulations to this group of bold, brave women who have taken on what they feel is a sense of responsibility to promote and create equitable access. That’s bottom line,” McDonald said.
He added, “I’m so proud of them and to know them and to work with them.”