(Additional photograph below.)
A third mobile health clinic—the other two already serving Haverhill’s and Lawrence’s homeless—allows the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center’s homeless healthcare program to expand its direct-to-patient primary care into Methuen. During yesterday’s ribbon-cutting, Health Center President and CEO Guy L. Fish said, “It’s super, super important that we get under the bridges, to the shelters, to the hotels where new immigrant families are being housed, and bring healthcare to them because healthcare is a human right.” Mobile clinics are necessary for those who can’t navigate the hospital system, or don’t have the means to get there, he added. Roughly the size of a large RV, the brand-new vehicle has three rooms. In the frontmost, the three-to-five-person staff can do simple assessments—take vital signs, do lab work or offer vaccines, said Health Care for the Homeless Medical Director Dr. Ryan Dono. The middle one functions both as a waiting area and space for evaluation. The third room, separated by a door, looks like a scaled down doctor’s office, allowing staff to perform full physical exams.
He said they do mostly the same procedures as at their brick-and-mortar office, including women’s health exams, ultrasounds and treating Hepatitis C. “Being able to treat people for Hepatitis C in the moment is an amazing intervention,” he added.
