Jim Slotnick adored the Los Angeles Free Clinic.  As a young medical student, his heart and eyes were opened by the spirit of the Clinic and by its motto:  health care is a right, not a privilege. Jim would have graduated with the UCLA School of Medicine Class of 1984, but he never got the chance.  After his death in 1983, the Clinic—now called Saban Community Clinic—established the Jim Slotnick Fellowship in Medicine. Offered every summer, the Fellowship is designed to give UCLA medical students a unique clinical opportunity, where they receive comprehensive mentoring and hands-on experience providing healthcare to the underserved at  three Saban Community Clinic sites.

Since 1984, thirty five UCLA medical students have been selected for the Jim Slotnick Fellowship in Medicine.  Most are now physicians around the country, working in specialties ranging from primary care, to emergency medicine, to obstetrics and gynecology, to trauma surgery. Although these Fellows never had the pleasure of meeting Jim, during their Fellowship they experienced what was most important to him-- health care for all, provided with dignity and compassion. Jim’s legacy and spirit live on through them.