Clinic History

Seeing the destruction and need in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Zoe Maher founded Temple Emergency Action Corps (TEAC) in August 2005. The organization partnered with the Greenfield Foundation to initiate a small group of students traveling to Louisiana to help with the relief effort. In the following years, students of TEAC continued to travel to locations affected by a disaster, both local and international, to assist in whatever ways they could. TEAC started to grow mainly as an international relief response and global health education organization.

In the fall of 2010, TEAC board members decided to take a new direction and created a local branch of TEAC that focused on North Philadelphia homeless outreach. Students began volunteering weekly at a women’s winter respite, 1515 Fairmount, and a men’s safe haven, Kailo’s Haven. A new Microclinic committee and the official TEAC Microclinic started in the Fall of 2012. They offered services such as checking blood pressure and blood glucose.

In the Fall of 2013, board members saw a need for further outreach and initiated planning of a new student-run primary care clinic that would soon be called the TEACH and CARE Clinic.

After extensive planning and research, the student run clinic location was established in August 2014 and opened its doors in January 2016. While the opening of the new clinic was a great step for TEAC, there were a few significant hurdles. The clinic struggled to attract patients, having seen under 100 patients in a year of operation.  Reasons for this could have been due to its proximity to the Temple Emergency Department as well as the cost of going to the clinic.

In May 2018, TEAC board members held a restructuring retreat. One of the major outcomes from this meeting was the decision to close the TEACH and CARE clinic in September 2018 and begin planning for a clinic with a different structure. With the previous clinic’s problems in mind, board members spent a summer shadowing at JeffHOPE and learning about successful student run free clinics in the country. In November 2018, the board established the new student run free clinic at the men’s shelter One Day at a Time (ODAAT). In just a few months, the clinic has had 122 visits, a reflection of the clinic’s promising future.