When the Rotary Club of San Jose was looking for a new location for the RotoCare Bay Area medical clinic, its members decided to bring the services to the people who need them rather than having them come to a brick-and-mortar facility.
Five years later, the Rotary club, in collaboration with Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County and the Order of Malta, unveiled its Rotary Mobile Medical Clinic Oct. 17 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in downtown San Jose.
The mobile clinic is designed to bring health care directly to vulnerable populations, including the unhoused, low-income families and immigrant communities at multiple locations throughout Santa Clara County. It will provide services including health screenings, social services, benefits enrollment, behavioral health and other referrals.
“We wanted to identify a project that we felt would solve a critical need,” San Jose Rotarian Vincent Sunzeri said at the grand opening ceremony. “We were looking for something that would have long-term impact and create a sense of pride and inspiration, and we think the Rotary Mobile Medical Clinic does exactly that.”
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Greg Kepferle of Catholic Charities said the mobile clinic will address the social determinants of health as well as clients’ specific physical health and mental health issues.
“So as we look at the issues of poverty … it takes addressing food and housing, access to benefits, access to immigration legal services, access to employment,” Kepferle added.
The mobile clinic marks the second joint project between Catholic Charities and the Rotary club, the first being a mobile emergency van in 2019. Sunzeri said one goal of the mobile clinic is to cut down on the number of medical emergencies that vulnerable populations experience.
“Let’s think about moving from episodic care to trying to transition people into the medical system,” he added. “That will be the true measure of our success.”
