Saint Agnes broke ground this week on the Holy Cross Clinic, a new health care facility rising in downtown Fresno just off F and Santa Clara streets, a stone's throw from the Poverello House. The project is designed to provide basic medical care to people who need it most, with organizers hoping doors will open sometime in January if construction and planning stay on track.
According to ABC30, the clinic will handle everything from screenings and immunizations to basic care for a population that often falls through the cracks of the traditional health system. Kayla Allen said the clinic will also help address the social-factor needs that keep people from staying healthy in the first place — things like food, housing and transportation. Those are the kinds of barriers that can turn a simple checkup into an unreachable goal for someone sleeping outside or without a car.
A Legacy Rooted in the Poverello House
The idea of pairing Saint Agnes with services at the Poverello House isn't new. Back in 1982, Saint Agnes Medical Center joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross to create the original Holy Cross Clinic at Poverello House in downtown Fresno, according to a case study published by the American Hospital Association. That clinic was built to provide free medical and dental services to the community's uninsured and underinsured, staffed by a full-time nurse practitioner alongside volunteer physicians, dentists, nurses and allied health practitioners. In fiscal year 2012 alone, it logged 4,662 medical visits and 841 dental visits.
The broader Holy Cross Health and Wellness Center that grew out of that effort has now provided more than 40 years of public service, per Saint Agnes' own location page at samc.com. In fiscal year 2026, Saint Agnes invested $221,497.96 in net community benefit to support the center's work, and the facility documented 19,116 encounters while distributing 90,349 essential items over that same period.
Expanding Beyond Medical Care
Saint Agnes and the Poverello House have also moved into housing. In May 2025, the two organizations partnered to transform an office building at the Holy Cross Center into a safe, temporary housing facility for unhoused and underserved women, according to samc.com. The renovated space covers 2,426 square feet and offers 30 beds, part of a broader push to meet needs that go well beyond a doctor's visit.
That mission extends into rural Fresno County too, where Saint Agnes and UCSF have led a mobile health program aimed at hard-to-reach agricultural communities, as reported by CalMatters. The Saint Agnes mobile clinic van carries two exam rooms and offers basic screenings, preventive and primary care, vaccinations, glucose monitoring and blood-pressure checks, and it is explicitly contracted to serve agricultural workers, their employers and their families. But CalMatters also found that visits to UCSF's mobile clinics fell by roughly 36 percent, from an average of 34 patients per outing in 2024 to about 22 more recently, as fear of immigration enforcement grew. Doctors involved in the program described a climate of distrust keeping would-be patients away.
Filling Gaps Closer to Home
The new downtown clinic arrives amid persistent concerns about access to care across Fresno County. A county planning document covering southwest Fresno has noted that residents there historically had few options for accessing medical facilities, with shortages in mental health, nursing and primary care services for a medically underserved population, according to the city of Fresno's own community health materials. Separate state evaluation findings have pointed to gaps in the service array, sociocultural barriers and workforce shortages limiting access to behavioral health services countywide.
For now, the focus in downtown Fresno is on bricks and mortar. If the timeline holds, the Holy Cross Clinic will open its doors in January, adding one more entry point for basic medical care in a neighborhood where the Poverello House has long served as a hub for the city's most vulnerable residents.
