Returning to Alaska to Provide Free Care in Remote Areas

By Allison McCauley-Cook
September 10, 2026

Help Provide Free Care

Your gift helps RAM provide free dental, vision, and medical services to people in need.

Remote Area Medical (RAM®) is on the move again. This week and next, we’ll be holding clinics in Alaska, The Last Frontier.

Our clinic this weekend is in Fairbanks, and next weekend we’ll be in Anchorage, providing free dental, vision, and medical care to people in need.

RAM last held clinics in Fairbanks and Anchorage in 2024, serving more than 650 patients and providing nearly $600,000 in free care.

Learn more about RAM’s impact in Alaska and around the world on our Impact Map.

Why Bringing Care to Alaska Is Important

RAM holds clinics in communities where local Community Host Groups invite us to serve. In some of Alaska’s most remote communities, healthcare can be hours away.

Even in Fairbanks, Alaska’s second-largest city, there are 1,033 residents for every primary care physician. Access to specialists and dentists is even more limited.

Support This Story

Your gift helps RAM continue providing free care to people in need.

For some patients, access to care has been limited from the very beginning. Four-year-old Jaxxus, for example, had never seen a doctor before coming to RAM.

That’s why Dr. Patrick Campaign, OD, an optometrist and Community Host Group lead, believes bringing RAM Clinics to Alaska is so important.

According to DataUSA, nearly 10% of people in Anchorage and Fairbanks are uninsured. In more remote areas, that percentage can be even higher. Many patients have driven for hours to receive free care at RAM Clinics in Alaska.

The Journey to Alaska

Bringing a RAM Clinic to Alaska requires a little more planning than most.

For most RAM Clinics, our supply and equipment teams load everything needed for the clinic onto RAM trucks and drive directly to the clinic location.

For Alaska, the journey begins nearly three weeks before the clinic.

First, RAM’s transportation team drives the equipment more than 2,600 miles to Seattle, Washington. There, the truck and everything inside it are loaded onto a cargo ship bound for Alaska.

Once the truck arrives, a RAM driver reunites with it and drives it to the clinic location, where the team sets up as usual.

Thanks to an in-kind donation from corporate sponsor TOTE Group, RAM saves thousands of dollars transporting equipment to Alaska, helping make these clinics possible.

RAM Volunteers in Alaska

Getting the equipment to Alaska is only part of the challenge. We also need volunteers to provide the care.

RAM Clinics would not be possible without professional volunteers, including doctors, dentists, optometrists, nurses, hygienists, and others who dedicate their time to caring for patients.

When it comes to recruiting volunteers, Alaska is what RAM refers to as a “closed state” for medical and vision services. That means providers must be licensed in Alaska to practice there, even when volunteering at a RAM Clinic.

That can make volunteer recruitment more difficult because RAM cannot bring in medical and vision providers licensed only in other states.

Dentists, however, can apply for a temporary license to practice in Alaska. The approval process can take up to six months.

Dr. Ronald Perry and other instructors from Tufts University received temporary licenses, allowing more dentists to provide care at RAM’s Alaska clinics.

These instructors and the students accompanying them will make up a significant portion of the clinic’s dental volunteer team.

Dental care is one of RAM’s most requested services, and these volunteers will help provide fillings, cleanings, and extractions to patients who need them.

RAM’s Student Volunteer Travel Fund

Dental students traveling from Tufts are the first recipients of RAM’s Student Volunteer Travel Fund.

The fund is helping 12 dental students travel roughly 4,000 miles to volunteer at RAM’s clinics in Alaska.

The fund gives RAM another way to fill gaps in volunteer recruitment. Until now, volunteer dental students have paid their own travel expenses to serve at RAM Clinics.

More volunteers mean more opportunities to provide care.

The fund could be especially helpful in states like Alaska, which has no dental schools and therefore fewer local dental students available to volunteer.

RAM’s First Alaskan Clinic

While RAM’s Fairbanks and Anchorage clinics are relatively new, our history in Alaska goes back more than a decade.

RAM’s first Alaska clinic was held in Atka, a small, remote island community off the state’s western coast.

In 2010, RAM Dental Director Dr. John Osborn, DDS, FACD, FICD, and his wife, Laurel, made the trip from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Atka to provide free dental care to people living on the island.

Atka is one of the most remote locations RAM has served in recent memory.

Getting there took Dr. and Mrs. Osborn nearly 24 hours and included sitting in the back of a small cargo plane, flying over volcanoes, and enduring weather delays along the way.

Dr. Osborn was the first dentist to visit the island in more than two years. The previous dentist had been unable to provide care because weather prevented his equipment from arriving.

RAM had sent Dr. Osborn’s equipment ahead of time, allowing him to provide care to every patient who requested it.

According to the U.S. Census, Atka had a population of 61 in 2010. Dr. Osborn provided dental care to all 21 people who requested it.

There was no dental clinic on the island, so Dr. Osborn set up inside a recreation room. There, over the course of a few days, he performed 13 extractions, 38 fillings, and two cleanings.

Thirteen years later, RAM returned to Alaska. In 2023, RAM held its first clinics in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

And now, we’re returning again.