A Saturday morning at HAVEN looks like a primary care clinic. It is actually 22 departments working at once, most of them doing work that happens on weekdays, over the phone, or in a spreadsheet, and almost none of it visible from an exam room.
This page is the whole clinic. What each department does, and how it holds up the rest.
The departments that see you in an exam room. Every encounter is supervised by a licensed attending physician or nurse.
Where most patients start and where most care happens.
Clinical teams pair a senior student, who takes your history, examines you, and builds a treatment plan with the attending, and a junior student, who takes your vitals and coordinates the rest of your visit. A separate longitudinal track follows medically complex patients with the same team across many visits.
Learn moreSexual and reproductive health for patients of all genders.
Breast exams, STI testing, contraception counseling and prescriptions including IUDs and implants, gender-affirming hormone therapy, menopause care, and referrals for mammograms and specialist gynecologic care. A care coordination team handles appointment reminders, results, and the logistics behind every procedure.
Learn moreSpecialty care brought inside the clinic.
HAVEN launched its first specialty clinic, Dermatology, in 2025, followed by Nephrology and Neurology. These clinics let patients see a specialist without the cost and wait that usually stand in the way. They are held on select clinic days alongside primary care.
Learn moreBlood draws and specimen collection in clinic.
When your provider orders blood work, Phlebotomy draws it during your visit and sends it to the YNHH lab for processing. Every volunteer is trained in venipuncture by a phlebotomist and evaluated before working with patients.
Learn moreRoutine and preventive immunizations for established patients.
Vaccines are administered by licensed clinicians during your visit, who confirm each vaccine is right for you and answer questions as they go. A coordinator handles the documentation, state compliance, and scheduling the follow-up doses of any vaccine series. Vaccines are part of ongoing care at HAVEN rather than a standalone service, and availability varies.
Learn moreThe departments that keep your care moving between Saturdays, and that get you to care we cannot provide ourselves.
The warm handoff when you are ready to leave HAVEN.
Transfer of Care volunteers walk patients through moving to a permanent primary care provider: discussing the process, calling outside clinics to establish appointments, and coordinating with every HAVEN department involved in your care so nothing is dropped in the transition. This is the closing stage of the Compass Program.
Learn moreGetting you in to specialty care you could not otherwise afford.
Referrals volunteers connect patients to radiology, gastroenterology, cardiology, and other specialties, coordinating between outside offices, patients, and HAVEN providers. They work with the YNHH Free Care office so a referral is something you can actually afford to follow through on, and they follow up so patients are not lost between appointments.
Learn moreEvery conversation between the clinic and its patients.
Patient Services registers new patients, collects intake information, explains what HAVEN offers, manages appointments and the triage line, and makes patient phone calls throughout the week. If you have called the clinic or been called by it, you have spoken to Patient Services.
Care in the language you actually speak.
Around 85% of HAVEN patients speak primarily Spanish, and the clinic could not function without interpreters. One interpreter is assigned to each clinical team and stays with the patient through the whole visit, with additional interpreters assigned to Education, Social Services, Referrals, Reproductive Health, Behavioral Health, and Phlebotomy wherever possible.
The departments that address everything outside the exam room that determines whether care actually works: cost, medication, food, legal trouble, and mental health.
Making sure care does not leave you in debt.
MDIC completes and files HUSKY and YNHH Free Care applications with patients, reviews bills, and acts as the liaison between Yale healthcare facilities, debt collection agencies, and HAVEN's Medical-Legal Partnership. The goal is both preventing new medical debt and clearing debt patients already carry.
Learn moreFree civil legal help for problems that are making patients sick.
Run with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School, the MLP takes referrals from HAVEN clinicians and social services for legal problems with health consequences: unsafe housing and eviction, wrongly denied public benefits, insurance denials and appeals, protective orders and family safety matters, and certain immigration and employment matters. Patients are referred through their care team rather than applying directly, and there is no cost.
Mental health education, screening, and warm referrals.
BHD is an educational program, not a psychiatric service. Volunteers, trained and supervised by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, help patients understand emotional wellbeing as part of overall health, recognize signs of distress, and connect with community providers for ongoing treatment. It also co-leads monthly group education sessions.
Learn moreOne-on-one health and wellness counseling.
The Education department sits with patients individually to build plans around chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol, using motivational interviewing. It also creates patient education materials and helps patients with the financial side of maintaining a healthy diet.
Learn moreFinding a way for every prescription to actually get filled.
Medication Access locates affordable options for every medication HAVEN prescribes, dispenses on-site medications and supplies, manages inventory and donated shipments, and delivers medications to patients at home where needed. It also runs the clinic's patient assistance and low-cost mail-order programs.
Learn moreGroceries and nutrition support as part of a clinic visit.
Started in 2023 with the Yale School of Medicine, the Food Pharmacy supplies healthy groceries and nutritional education to patients experiencing food insecurity, immediately after their clinic visit. It is paired with a study investigating whether food access slows the progression of chronic disease.
Closing the gap between medical and dental care.
Dental and medical care are split apart by insurance and by the way the system is built, and patients fall through the middle. The team triages oral health concerns, then coordinates with scheduling, referrals, and insurance counseling to book patients with community dental providers and confirm the appointments actually happen. HAVEN does not perform dental treatment itself.
Learn moreThe departments patients rarely meet, without which there would be no clinic to visit.
Measuring whether the clinic is actually working, and fixing it when it is not.
QA/QI runs project-based improvements and research on clinic processes and outcomes: evaluating new disease management programs, streamlining patient intake, analyzing clinical results. It works across every other department, and its data increasingly drives how the clinic makes decisions.
Paying for free care.
HAVEN never bills a patient for a visit, and donations pay for the medications, lab tests, and specialist care that follow. Finance and Development runs the annual ANDA 5K, the alumni Appeal, grant applications, and donor relationships, and works with student leaders to align the budget with what the clinic is trying to do.
Learn moreRecruiting, placing, and supporting the volunteer body.
Student Relations runs recruitment each term, reviews every application, matches volunteers to departments based on skills and clinic need, and coordinates training and onboarding. It is also the first point of contact for general volunteer questions.
Learn moreThe systems the clinic runs on, and how it tells its story.
IT and Communications maintains this website, the volunteer portal, and the scheduling and recruitment platforms, and produces the clinic newsletter and outreach materials. Its work is aimed at the same two audiences as everything else: patients and the volunteers who serve them.
Learn moreNobody on this page is paid. Not the students who staff the departments, and not the attending physicians and nurses who supervise every clinical encounter. They give up their Saturdays, and a good deal of the week around them, so that our patients can be seen.
To all of them: thank you. The clinic is your work.
Social Services
SOSEScreening for social needs and connecting patients to resources.
Social Services screens every patient for food and housing insecurity, utility hardship, transportation barriers, immigration concerns, and safety, then builds a plan to access food assistance, energy assistance, English classes, and other programs. It works closely with MDIC and the MLP, and runs small-group community outreach projects.
Learn more