Jump to: Medical Care | Mental Health | Substance Abuse
Medical Care
Clients deal with a wide range of health issues resulting from or exacerbated by life on the street. Often, homeless men and women desperately need medical treatment, but they may not know how to access care or might be reluctant to receive it.
Our goal is to make treatment and care readily available and to facilitate early intervention, all in a safe environment. We do this in a variety of ways.
1. Partnership with Lutheran/Mt. Sinai Community Medical Program, as well as a registered nurse and a nurse practitioner on-site at the Mainchance Drop-In Center to provide tuberculosis testing, general medical treatment and referrals.
2. Programs like JCAP Living Proof
 and Partnership for the Homeless provide access to HIV/AIDS testing and counseling.
3. Medical student volunteers 
from Cornell Medical School provide a more extensive evaluation of client’s health concerns on Monday evenings from September through June.
Mental Health
It is estimated that approximately 25% of homeless single adults have mental health issues. Therefore, access to mental health care is vitally important for the welfare of many clients at GCNSSC. We provide mental health services through the Manhattan Psychiatric Outreach Program (MPOP).
Through a partnership with Bellevue Hospital Medical Center’s Mobile Crisis Unit
, we are also able to provide crisis intervention, supportive therapy, psychiatric evaluations and situational assessments through a multidisciplinary team of professionals, including a psychiatrist, a psychiatric nurse, and a clinical social worker.
Substance Abuse
For clients with addiction and substance abuse issues, we work closely with many Detox programs throughout the city. Because many clients decide to enter Detox right from the street, we provide transportation to these programs through our outreach team.
Once clients are released from Detox, they are welcome back to a safe environment at Mainchance, where we can give them information and resources on how to stay clean, and help them move on to special housing programs for people who have a history of substance abuse. We are aided in our efforts by programs such as Project Renewal.
Together, GCNSSC and Project Renewal aim to make treatment for substance abuse available to everyone.