Bayside Housing & Services
Project: JC MASH Free Clinic
Request: $15,000
In 2023, JC MASH Free Clinic became a project of Bayside Housing & Services. Since then the Clinic has hired a full-time Director, expanded its network of volunteer providers to include mental health professionals, and added weekly hours at the Jefferson County Emergency Shelter alongside its ongoing work at Woodley Place in Port Hadlock. A new office at Discovery Behavioral Healthcare is opening soon. The people it serves are our neighbors experiencing homelessness, housing instability, and financial hardship, many of whom have gone years without regular care.
The numbers tell the story. Through 2026 to date, the Clinic has provided medical and outreach services to 404 individuals and food or clothing assistance to another 435 — 839 people in all, with more than 1,000 expected before the year closes.
Here’s the problem you can help solve
Everyone understands that people without insurance struggle to get care. Fewer people realize that a free clinic has to have much of the same equipment list as any other clinic, and has to buy every item itself.
The Clinic's request is unglamorous but critical: an ophthalmoscope and otoscope; respiratory and emergency equipment; diagnostic tools; exam, procedure and wound-care supplies; medications and topical treatments; an autoclave to sterilize instruments; and locking file cabinets so patient records stay confidential.
What your donation makes possible
With the right instruments on hand, a volunteer provider can treat an infection, an injury, or a chronic condition right there instead of sending someone to the emergency room, which is slower, far more expensive, and often simply doesn't happen. Earlier treatment means fewer crises. Continuity of care means someone's blood pressure or diabetes actually gets followed rather than rediscovered in an ER six months later.
Your gift also makes possible expanded services. A Food and Clothing Pantry opened at Woodley Place this year, and it has become a doorway: people come for groceries and discover that medical and mental health care is available too, from people who treat them with respect. For patients who have experienced exclusion from healthcare systems, that reintroduction matters a great deal.
The bottom line
Your donation ads up to a clinic that can say yes more often, to more neighbors, in more places across Jefferson County. Help make sure that a person in need walks through the door finds a clinic ready to care for them.
