By Rocio Granados - La Voz Catolica
Photographer: JIM DAVIS | FC
Berta Cabrera, executive director of the St. John Bosco Clinic, is pictured near a painting of the 19th century Italian saint in this file photo from 2017.
MIAMI | Effective Oct. 1, 2021, St. John Bosco Clinic and the SSJ Health Foundation came under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Miami, with Catholic Charities set to oversee the management of both.
The change will be implemented in the coming weeks. Catholic Charities will provide management services to support the operations of both the clinic and the foundation beginning Jan. 1, 2022.
The changes will not affect the operations of the clinic or its patients.
“The clinic will continue with the same mission it has had for the past 30 years: seeing low-income patients who have no access to health insurance,” said Berta Cabrera, executive director of the clinic and the foundation.
She added that the clinic’s administration, employees and board of directors will remain the same.
“We are very grateful that the archdiocese and Catholic Charities have accepted the clinic as part of their organization, which is so well known and respected in the community,” Cabrera said. “We believe our patients will have access to more services while the people they serve will have easier access to the clinic.”
Peter Routsis-Arroyo, CEO of Catholic Charities, said “we anticipate our role to be more of guidance and oversight as these two organizations have operated independently for close to 30 years.”
The St. John Bosco Clinic has been sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine since its foundation in 1992. A short time later, the SSJ (Sisters of St. Joseph) Foundation was established to raise funds to provide basic medical care to children and adults in Miami-Dade County. The clinic also receives funding from Florida’s Department of Health and private and corporate donations.
The clinic has seven employees but “were it not for the volunteers, it could not function,” Cabrera said, stressing that free clinics, like St. John Bosco, can only do their work because of the generous time commitment of volunteers.
The clinic provides primary care to children and adults “who lack access, or in some cases, have not had access to medical care for many years,” said Cabrera.
Specialist physicians who volunteer their services also treat clinic patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension. The clinic sees around 1,200 people a year.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the clinic relied on telemedicine to serve its patients.
“It worked very well for the majority of the patients who used it,” said Cabrera.
The system is still used by patients who don’t need to be seen in person, such as those awaiting lab results or being monitored after being prescribed new medications.
Aside from physical care, the clinic offers “a care of hope, that there is a place where they can be helped, a place where they can go,” said Cabrera.
Many of those seen at the clinic are recent immigrants with very low incomes. Although most of them are Hispanics, mainly from Central and South America and the Caribbean, Cabrera noted that the clinic cares for people from all over the world, including U.S. natives.
The clinic was first located on the grounds of St. John Bosco Church in Little Havana. In 2008, it moved onto the property of Corpus Christi Church in Miami’s Allapattah area, also predominantly Hispanic.
For nearly 30 years, the clinic’s work has been “a light for many people who lacked access to medical care,” Cabrera said.
The clinic also educates patients about preventive care and “in some cases we help to pay for medicines if they are not too expensive.”
Cabrera, whose 40-year career spanned medical social work, case management, community outreach and non-profit administration, has announced her retirement as executive director at the end of December.
“For 10 years I have had the opportunity to do what I wanted to do since I began my career, which is to help the community, to bring people hope and educate them about how to access the many services that exist,” said Cabrera. “I am extremely grateful to the Sisters of St. Joseph whom I have worked with for nearly 40 years.”
CLINIC NEEDS VOLUNTEERS
- St. John Bosco Clinic needs volunteers to do office work.
- Those interested can contact Dailen Celma by calling 305- 635-1335, o emailing: [email protected].
