Donations help support the cathedral's ministry to the homeless and hungry by providing food, clothing, shelter, medical care and employment referrals. Bonita Devers, a family nurse practitioner, explained that the clinic at St. Joseph's is part of the Gardner Family Health Network's Healthcare for the Homeless Project. Devers and Janie Martinez, medical assistant, staff the operation. The Healthcare to the Homeless Project is partially a federal agency and is administered locally by Gardner, which also has a mobile van and other walk-in clinics. At St. Joseph's, Devers sees homeless men and a lot of other adults who have no other access to health care.
Services are free and on a walk-in basis.
Numbers of patients vary as to time of the year and the weather. The clinic sees many people in transition who are in the process of getting into the MediCal or SSI systems. We're a stop-gap and a referral service as well as direct care. The clinic has a supervising physician who is a doctor of internal medicine and a physician assistant on the team for the project.