Our core services revolve around wellness care to meet the health care needs of women who have fallen through the safety net of social services. The HCWW model is a unique approach to health care access for vulnerable women. We are not the PCPs; we provide “adjunct” care to close gaps in continuity for women whose focus on survival needs often supplants their ability to maintain continuous contact with their PCPs. Core staff provide diagnostics, referrals, and health education, helping clients stay on top of hypertension (blood pressure), diabetes (blood sugar), skin and musculoskeletal, respiratory, and mental health conditions. By closing those gaps, HCWW improves chronic disease monitoring and contributes to improved health and health literacy. HCWW patients experience a reduction in preventable illness, emergency room visits, and hospital admissions.
Wellness care is provided both in person and remotely via telehealth. In 2021, we opened our West Street Clinic for care appointments and walk in services, centrally located near many of the shelters used by unhoused women in Boston. Our team also provides wellness care at the Rosie’s Place Wellness Clinic. Our clinicians meet the immediate medical needs of homeless women and re-connect them to mainstream primary and specialty care.
In addition, we provide:
- over-the-counter medical supplies
- advocacy care
- connections to existing primary care resources
- advanced care referrals
- education and group counseling services (on topics such as diabetes care and nutrition)
Homeless women increasingly rely on telehealth and home visits for their care. HCWW clinicians provide them with much needed support, information, and assistance to access preventive health care, monitor symptoms, manage behavioral health, and more, especially when it is not practical or safe to visit us in our clinics, as during the Covid pandemic.
By the Numbers
