SEATTLE, WA—At a moment when the U.S. healthcare system grapples with federal cuts, clinician burnout, and pervasive racism, one South Seattle institution is charting a new path forward designed not by executives or industry, but by the true experts: community. 

Today, the Tubman Center for Health & Freedom released findings from its groundbreaking multi-year study, the Designing Responsive, Equitable, and Accountable Models of Care (DREAM) Study. The result is the Relational Medicine Model (RMM). 

The RMM is the first-of-its-kind, values-driven care model that centers relationships, trust, and dignity as the foundation for healing. Designed by Black, Brown, LGBTQIA+, and otherwise marginalized communities over the past five years, this model challenges conventional notions of care—and offers a path forward at a time when many are losing faith in the system entirely. 

“We built our own healthcare model,” said Danisha Jefferson-Abye, Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Tubman Health. “We knew from the start that the answers weren’t going to come from the same broken institutions. They were going to come directly from community.”  

The RMM reimagines every part of how community members receive care from the mainstream medical system: from how providers are supported, to how trust is built, to how care plans are shaped by the real lives, dreams, needs, and cultures of patients.  

Key Findings 

Community members who engaged in community design with Tubman Health shared their dreams for how they would like to be cared for. Some of the emerging themes include: 

• Care starts with trust, Healing begins with emotionally honest relationships. Patients want to feel seen, believed, and honored as experts in their own bodies.  

• Caregivers need care, too. Time, reasonable caseloads, and workplace belonging are prerequisites for providers to offer presence-based, high-quality care. 

• “Non-compliance” is a myth. Missed appointments and dropped treatments are often symptoms of structural barriers, not patient failure. Effective care plans must be co-created to fit into real lives. 

• Time is sacred. Patients need providers and care teams who are supported by structures that prioritize relationship-building, follow-up, and shared decision-making—not systems that reward volume and profit over people. 

• Systems must earn trust. Fragmented, transactional care has not proved trustworthy. The solution is not just new policies but going back to core values and systems that hold people, rather than abandoning or punishing them.  

A Model in Action 

Tubman Health is building infrastructure around what community is seeking: relationship, responsiveness, and respect. The RMM serves as the foundation of care across all three of Tubman Health’s clinic sites: 

1. The Freedom Clinic, a school-based center at Rainier Valley Leadership Academy. 

2. The Healing House, a retreat-like clinic in South Seattle offering integrative primary care services. 

3. And soon, the Tubman Health Center, breaking ground in 2026, which will bring this revolutionary model to scale and serve as a demonstration site for community-led care.  

“For many Americans, we know that healthcare does not work for us and is not healing. Community has created a new medical model that responds to our collective needs,” said Amanda Knights-Shi, Director of Research & Evaluation and lead researcher. “The Relational Medicine Model is delivering on that promise. This isn’t a question of proof. It’s a question of how we honor and implement the model that community has designed as an alternative to volume- and profit-driven medicine.” 

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About the Tubman Center for Health & Freedom:  

The Tubman Center for Health & Freedom addresses health and wellness from both systemic and clinical approaches. By practicing medicine from the intersection of health and freedom, we address both the health of our patients as well as the factors that determine their health. Tubman Health provides primary and preventative care, community resources, social services, political education and advocacy.