First Presbyterian Church
First Clinic Room
Catholic Charities on 3rd Avenue
Community Partners Campus
CPC Mural by Rise Up
New exam rooms

History

In 2017, Dr. Jeff Oswald and Mr. Jeff Todd first met to discuss the possibility of starting a free clinic in the Wausau area.  Dr. Oswald had been a practicing Family Physician for 30 years and saw the desperate need in our community for a clinic to serve individuals who were uninsured or underinsured.  He had sought the help of Mr. Todd, who was also passionate about the need for these types of services in our community.  He was actively involved as an elder for the First Presbyterian Church (FPC) in Wausau and prior to his retirement, had an extensive background in Public Health and had managed a large primary care clinic in the Wausau area. The church’s Session enthusiastically accepted the sponsorship challenge.

Their initial vision was to renovate a large portion of the FPC to accommodate a 2-3 provider clinic.  Donations were sought from the community foundations and businesses of Wausau with a capital campaign goal of $250,000.  Fundraising was progressing well and by the end of the 2018 approximately $150,000 had been raised.  

While working to meet our fundraising goal, we chose to start an outreach clinic in November 2018 at the Catholic Charities Warming Center to serve the homeless population of Marathon county.  This has given us the opportunity to begin our mission of serving underserved individuals in our community.  

That same year we were asked to become a charter member of the Community Partners Campus of Wausau - which is a new partnership planning to house local nonprofit organizations in one shared location.  This facility is planned to open in the fall/winter of 2021 at which time the Free Clinic of Wausau plans to open a state-of-the-art medical clinic. 

 In the meantime, we have started seeing patients in our temporary facility at the First United Methodist Church of Wausau every Thursday afternoon.  We will also continue to serve our Warming Center guests every Wednesday evening. 

Although it has taken awhile for us to get to this point in our development, we are extremely excited about our future as a partner in the Community Partners Campus.  This facility will truly give us the ability to better serve the individuals in our community that need our help.