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A Letter from our CEO

Dear friends,

This year marks Migrant Clinicians Network’s 40th year championing for health justice.  MCN has grown and matured into an impactful and award-winning national leader in migrant health, as you will see in the many successes chronicled in this report. 

We’ve experienced a lot in the last year. In 2023, our founding CEO, Karen Mountain, MBA, MSN, RN retired after an extraordinary 36 years of dedicated service. We are immensely grateful to Karen and continue to be inspired by her example of leadership, vision, generosity, and compassion.

In May, I had the honor of being selected as one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in global health. This extraordinary recognition underscores our organization's powerful work connecting migrants and asylum seekers to health care – work that almost no other organization does successfully in the United States.

Thank you for being an integral member of our team. Your generosity and commitment are making this lifesaving work possible. On these pages, you will see the breadth of our work and read inspirational stories about a few of the people we have touched. Together, we will continue fighting for health justice and equity through our innovative programs, trainings, and technical assistance.

With gratitude,

A Note From Our Board Chair

Dear Supporters of Migrant Clinicians Network,

As Board Chair, I welcome you into the Migrant Clinicians Network family. We are an organization with a big heart and a bold mission: to ensure health equity for migrants and immigrants by creating practical solutions at the intersection of vulnerability, migration, and health. We have accomplished much in 2023, and we have a strong vision for the coming years. 

Climate change, political and economic instability, growth and opportunity, and global mobility are increasing migration worldwide – but our health and immigration systems are unprepared to meet the health needs of migrants like asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border or migrant farmworkers moving across state lines. 

In the midst of this dynamic world of migration, Migrant Clinicians Network is reducing barriers to care, bolstering clinicians’ skills to serve migrants, building linkages between marginalized communities and health providers, pushing for protections for low-wage workers, and much more. This lifesaving work builds a stronger, more just world, forging a path for healthier migrations. 

On behalf of the MCN Board of Directors, I invite you to join us: engage with us, share our work with colleagues, and donate to our critical programs. Together, we can build a world based on health justice and equity, where migration is never an impediment to well-being.

Saving Lives, Connecting to Care

In 2023, more than 960,000 individuals in families and 137,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the US southern border. Despite strides made to enhance medical services within Customs and Border Protection facilities, the lack of coordinated support upon legal release into the US poses significant challenges, particularly for high-risk individuals in need of urgent care.

Health Care is a Human Right

MCN's Health Network is the only organization in the United States providing medical care coordination for immigrants traveling anywhere in the country with pressing health needs. Our team of seven Health Network Associates, a social worker, nurse midwife, and physician connect thousands of patients to care, saving lives, and ensuring that this critical human right is accessible to everyone in the US.

Pregnant Women and Sick Children Deserve Care

Health Network reduces maternal mortality in the United States through a programmatic focus on pregnant women and children. We also ensure access to high-quality specialty care for migrant children with complex or acute medical problems.

Climate and Environmental Justice

Workers experience extreme environmental risks like pesticide exposure, contaminated water, dust, mold, heat, and more –many of which are amplified or complicated by the climate crisis. MCN’s climate and environmental justice efforts extend into advocacy, education and technical assistance and participatory research. Our effective and culturally attuned efforts target all levels, from nationwide structural injustices, to training and support of individual workers and small communities.

Workers Need Healthy and Safe Workplaces

Immigrant and migrant workers labor in some of the most hazardous jobs in the country, from building homes to harvesting our produce to milking our cows to cleaning up after a disaster -- and they are afforded few protections. MCN is on the frontlines with our clinical network to build stronger workplace protections, ensure sufficient training and resources for workers, and provide ample technical assistance and education for clinicians to care for workers, should they be injured or sick on the job.

Recognizing Trauma

Migrants and immigrants experience violence and violation before, during, and after migration. Clinicians and other “witnesses” have their own stress responses when listening to migrants’ stories. Clinicians’ work demands cause moral injury, when they are unable to provide the care their patients need. MCN’s Mental Health and Well-Being program addresses these complex factors through an anti-racist and trauma-informed approach focused on culturally responsive resources, webinars, and peer-support groups.

Moving from Stressed and Exhausted to Empowered and Aware

MCN’s Witness to Witness equips clinicians to become empowered to better support their patients. In 2023, W2W offered webinars and resources on the Witnessing approach, MCN’s primary well-being framework on how to manage stress and improve well-being, to over 600 clinicians. We also provided clinician support groups, a space for health care workers to connect and build community with others who truly understand their experiences. This work is wildly popular -- and growing. 

Growing Our Impact

Building on our successful efforts supporting clinicians, MCN is expanding these efforts to provide culturally responsive and accessible resources and frameworks to essential workers, farmworkers, and immigrant workers. We equip both individuals and organizations with the tools they need to create supportive environments where well-being is a priority.

Centering Migrant and Immigrant Community Needs and Realities

MCN’s robust education efforts incorporate the needs of the communities we serve from start to finish. MCN includes elements like participatory evaluation – in which the community who receives the training conducts elements like self-assessments and feedback loops that inform the direction of the trainings in real time – to ensure our webinars are the most effective, inclusive, culturally relevant, and practical.

Continuing Education for Clinicians and Health Care Teams

MCN’s clinical education continues to be highly rated, highly sought after, and unique in the country. Our Diabetes ECHO series for Community Health Workers, for example, is the only series in the country specifically serving Community Health Workers on diabetes and entirely in Spanish. MCN is agile enough to quickly address emerging issues like H5N1 and the effects of wildfire smoke and heat on workers.

Major Drivers of Migration

As climate change, environmental stressors, political upheaval, war and unrest, and economic pressures collide with a technology-rich world, migration has become more common -- and more complicated. MCN is equipped, with 40 years of service, partnerships, and successes, to meet the growing and complex needs of migrants across the nation. Our work ensures that their human rights and basic dignities are upheld – including the right to migrate safely, and the right to access health care when needed.

The Clinical Perspective

We view the world through a health justice lens. MCN’s clinical approach ensures that the health issues that migrant and immigrants face are top-of-mind during emerging threats like a climate disaster, new policy at the border, or an emerging infectious disease. In 2023, MCN responded to a wide range of issues, from long COVID to occupational heat stress, creating greater health equity and building capacity to better serve migrants and immigrants.

Board of Directors

Our Donors Say...

"I started donating to MCN over twenty years ago. I was captivated by their mission which, to me, transcends artificial boundaries and focuses on what matters most—the care of human beings. All humans deserve dignity and care regardless of their socio-economic or political standings. MCN understands this truth and is realistic and effective in navigating it."

Steven Luff

"I worked at Krogers for over 45 years in the Fresh Produce area. The more I learned about how all the produce that I loaded off the trucks got here, the more I felt sorry for the workers making it all possible. We make a mistake to take the fresh fruits and veggies for granted. I decided to donate regularly to an organization that provides direct support to the hard-working migrants in this country, wherever they are from. Migrant Clinicians Network was the obvious choice."

Jeff Bruneau

"We are grateful for the important work that MCN has done to bring health care information, education, and services to an especially vulnerable population. Migrant workers and their families are closer to the basic elements of environmental change than most of us, and yet they work hard to put food on our tables and make our lives easier. We too easily forget that they need health care services, education, and protection. We feel fortunate to be in a position to support MCN’s valuable work."

Mark and Laurie Kirszner

Read the entire report -- including stories from our clients, patients, and donors, breakdowns of MCN's financials, and more:

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