Dr. Gulshan Harjee, a doctor who co-founded the Clarkston Community Health Center, has spent most of her career working at this charity clinic since selling her private practice eight years ago.
The clinic serves a large number of immigrant patients, a cause close to Harjee’s heart due to her own childhood experiences of fleeing three countries. She left a successful practice to work at the clinic and believes in “paying it forward.”
Unlike Harjee, many immigrant doctors face challenges practicing medicine in Georgia. Doctors who were trained outside the U.S. often struggle to compete for limited residency spots, even though there’s a strong demand for doctors in the state, especially in rural areas.
The Clarkston clinic operates with volunteer doctors partly because of this shortage. Harjee suggests that Georgia could solve part of this problem by creating a program to allow internationally trained doctors to gain experience at U.S. health facilities, which would help them get licensed to practice here.
Such a program could provide more doctors for the state without a significant cost, and states like Tennessee and Alabama have already started similar programs. This would help immigrant doctors gain experience and better serve communities, especially in areas where language barriers exist.
Harjee has been advocating for this change for years, but despite her efforts, Georgia has not passed a law to help foreign-trained doctors join the state’s workforce. A bill introduced in 2024 aimed to allow these doctors to train in Georgia’s health centers, but it didn’t pass. Harjee hopes this issue will get more attention in the upcoming legislative session, but she worries that it may not.
Georgia, like many other states, faces a growing shortage of healthcare workers, with estimates showing a significant gap in primary care providers by 2025. This shortage is particularly bad in rural areas, but even in places like DeKalb County, where the Clarkston clinic is located, there is a shortage of over 100 primary care providers. Many immigrants in the area have medical training, and Harjee believes they could help fill this gap if given the opportunity.
Groups like Ser Familia, a nonprofit serving Latino communities, also see the potential of foreign-trained doctors to improve access to healthcare for non-English speakers. These doctors could better communicate with patients in their native language, reducing delays and misunderstandings that come with using interpreters.
Other states, like Tennessee, have already passed laws to make it easier for foreign-trained doctors to work in their healthcare systems. In Tennessee, a new law allows these doctors to get training and become licensed much faster, addressing the state’s own healthcare worker shortages.
Georgia has yet to follow suit, but state Senator Kim Jackson, who represents Clarkston, plans to propose a similar bill again in the 2025 session. While Harjee is unsure if it will pass soon, she remains hopeful and believes it would be a huge benefit for both the healthcare system and patients in need.
For Harjee, the goal is simple: to give immigrant doctors the chance to practice and serve people who can’t access healthcare anywhere else, creating a cycle of gratitude and care.