Somali-American physician’s St. Cloud clinic treats 4,500 patients in first year

In central Minnesota, a Somali-American doctor builds a clinic that speaks the community’s language

On a winter Saturday in St. Cloud, the parking lot outside a modest strip mall is doing brisk business. Children in puffy coats hop between parents’ hands. A woman steps out of a halal butcher shop with a paper sack of lamb bones for soup. A door just down the row swings open, and a man in a pale-blue medical coat ushers in a family. Inside Hayat Clinic, the hum is steady and familiar: a child’s cough, a greeting in Somali, a printer whirring with lab results. It feels less like a clinic and more like a neighborhood living room with stethoscopes.

The man in the coat is Dr. Bashir Moallin, a Somali-American physician who opened Hayat Clinic in 2023 after years of noticing the same pattern: thousands of East African immigrants in central Minnesota were delaying care. They were running up against barriers—language, culture, transportation, and money—that make even a routine checkup feel daunting. He tried something simple, almost radical in its practicality: meet people where they are and when they can come.

A clinic born of weekends and night shifts

“I knew there was a need for primary care service during the weekend,” Moallin told me between patients. “At that time, there was not any other clinic that provided primary care during the weekend.” In St. Cloud, a manufacturing hub that has drawn workers from Somalia and across East Africa for two decades, Saturday and Sunday hours have proven transformative. Many patients juggle factory shifts, cleaning jobs, or ride-share driving and can’t afford a weekday appointment at 2 p.m. Hayat is open seven days a week.

Moallin’s path to that waiting room ran across continents. He grew up in Mogadishu, trained in Jordan, and completed his residency at the University of Minnesota in partnership with CentraCare, the regional health system. During the pandemic, when mistrust and misinformation swelled, he found himself on Somali-language television explaining why vaccines mattered—bringing a doctor’s calm to fear and rumor.

In its first year, his independent clinic saw more than 4,500 patients—an outsize number for a five-exam-room practice with a small lab that can turn around tests for strep, influenza and RSV. The modest footprint is deliberate: the clinic sits in a strip mall already frequented by Somali-owned businesses and a pharmacy. If you need antibiotics, you can walk 30 steps to the counter. If you need to pop next door for groceries or wire transfer services, that can happen too. In communities where one bus ride too many can be a deal-breaker, proximity is a form of care.

Care in the language you dream in

Language is Hayat’s quiet superpower. Nurses and medical assistants speak Somali, Arabic, Swahili and English. That matters not only for accuracy but for dignity. As one nurse, Hodan Yussuf, explained, direct communication helps patients feel truly seen, not filtered through an interpreter on a speakerphone. It means a mother can explain the kind of cough her child has without searching for words she has never had to use in English. It means a grandfather can describe a headache the way his own father taught him to describe pain. Health care is intimate; it is different when it happens in the language you dream in.

Across the United States, immigrant communities often rely on patchwork solutions: a bilingual receptionist here, a volunteer interpreter there, or family members stepping in to translate sensitive details. But research shows that language barriers lead to diagnostic errors, missed appointments and lower rates of preventive screening. In the United Kingdom and Canada, health systems have invested heavily in community clinics that honor cultural and linguistic needs; in the U.S., much of that work falls to people like Moallin, who build trust and infrastructure one conversation at a time.

Prevention, vaccines and trust

Hayat’s rooms are busy with the everyday work of primary care: blood pressure cuffs, glucometer readings, advice on diet and exercise that people can actually follow. Prevention is a steady drumbeat. Many patients come from health systems—Somalia’s among them—where care is sought when illness becomes acute. “We spend time talking about why screening for diabetes or cancer matters,” Moallin said. It’s a bridge between different medical cultures, and it takes time.

Vaccine hesitancy is another frontier. During his residency, Moallin went on television to reassure Somali families rattled by online rumors and historical mistrust. He still approaches it the same way today: with patience, example and calm. “Sometimes I can see the ease in their face,” he said. “And most of them, they accept and do the vaccine.” He often mentions the simplest proof point: “My own kids are vaccinated.” In communities where trust travels fastest through kin and neighborhood networks, that personal detail can matter more than a graph or a brochure.

The bill at the door

For all the clinic’s careful scaffolding—language access, weekend hours, a location that reduces the friction of seeking care—the hardest barrier remains financial. Up to 20 percent of Hayat’s patients have no insurance. Most others rely on government programs. Potential changes to Medicare and Medicaid rules worry him, not because of politics as much as what disruption does at the clinic door. Missed coverage means missed care. And missed care often means bigger, costlier problems later, in emergency rooms where language and trust are even harder to stitch together on a bad night.

Nationally, noncitizens remain far more likely to be uninsured than citizens, according to health policy researchers, and even small bureaucratic shifts—a new verification requirement, a change in eligibility—can ripple through communities where paperwork is a second or third language. In Minnesota, where policymakers often tout low uninsured rates, numbers don’t always capture the complexities of families navigating mixed immigration statuses, multiple jobs and fluctuating incomes. Moallin knows this because he sees it every day, one family at a time.

The ripple effect

Clinics like Hayat can change more than health outcomes. They change aspirations. Some of Moallin’s youngest patients have started asking about medical careers. He smiles when he says this—an expression echoed by Somali parents who still remember the doctors back home who did house calls in sandals and white coats. He is already thinking about expanding into mental health services, a critical need in communities shaped by migration, loss and the stress of starting over. That ambition aligns with a global trend: community health models that integrate mental wellness alongside physical care, recognizing that trauma and blood pressure often ride together.

A local story with a global echo

If you step back from that strip mall and draw a wider circle, you see versions of Hayat in other places: clinics in London’s East End with Arabic-speaking GPs; a storefront practice in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park with Urdu signage; a mobile clinic serving refugees in Berlin. Across continents, immigrant-run health initiatives are pushing systems to adapt—to offer weekend hours, to recruit multilingual staff, to put clinics near bus lines and grocery stores rather than behind hospital campuses.

What will this look like in ten years? Will large health systems take cues from Hayat and redesign hours, billing and staffing for the realities of shift work and multilingual cities? Will policymakers ensure that safety-net insurance is stable enough for clinics like this to plan and grow? Or will the work continue to fall on a handful of doctors who build bridges in their spare time?

For now, on a Saturday in St. Cloud, the answer is in the waiting room: a circle of chairs, a child’s winter hat on the floor, lab results clipped to a chart, and a physician who doesn’t rush the conversation. “As long as we have patients, we will be here,” Moallin said. The door opens; the next family comes in from the cold.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.