Health care is a basic human right, say Meghan Hunter, MBA ’22, and Mary Ellen Luck, MBA ’22. That’s why together, they’re helping formerly incarcerated people access the care they need.

After graduating from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Hunter and Luck made their way to Montgomery, Alabama, to join the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization founded by public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson that’s dedicated to addressing issues of racial and economic injustice. Drawn by EJI’s mission, the two would soon be helping expand the nonprofit’s services beyond the legal domain — and into health care.

“Our lawyers saw firsthand, through their clients, the challenges in terms of trying to access basic health care services,” Luck says. Alabama did not have anything like a free clinic offering treatment to former prisoners, who are often unemployed and uninsured.. “So I got to work on a lot of the research,” Hunter recalls. She started asking, “If we were to do something in health care, what might be possible? What could this look like?”

The answer to that question is EJI Health, a walk-in clinic in Montgomery, and a mobile clinic that travels around the state. Both offer free health care to anyone who’s recently been released from jail or prison. “Part of what we're trying to do is rebuild trust in health care,” Luck says. “I hope we’re showing that it is possible to provide high-quality, warm, high-touch care and lower the barrier to entry for groups that historically have not had access.”

For both Luck and Hunter, their work is about more than just health care. “Health is essential for us being able to access all of our other basic human rights,” Hunter says. “It's a privilege for us for our patients to trust us — that continues to fuel why I do what I do.”