Symba Center is a nonprofit, faith-based free clinic providing primary healthcare services to uninsured patients in the High Desert. Pharmacists, Dr. Shawn Smith and Dr. Bowtie Brian founded Symba Center with the shared purpose of improving community wellness by increasing access to healthcare for all individuals, especially those who are uninsured or homeless.

As members of the City of Victorville’s Homelessness Solutions Task Force, Symba Center is helping to identify wellness and care solutions for the city’s homeless population, which ranks second-highest in San Bernardino County.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Symba Center providers put themselves on the frontlines to protect Victorville’s homeless community. They collaborated with the City’s three homeless shelters to establish intake, quarantine, and testing protocols in accordance with CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of this deadly disease to the city’s vulnerable homeless population and homeless shelter staff. They conducted training for shelter staff on how to identify COVID-19 symptoms and the proper use of PPE and performed COVID-19 testing.

Symba Center conducts wellness checks and chronic disease management for the most vulnerable in Victorville’s homeless shelters and for homeless individuals in San Bernardino County’s Project Roomkey.

Symba Center is collaborating with the City of Victorville in planning its Wellness Center Complex, which will be a 168-bed, low-barrier-entry, wellness and recuperative care center providing shelter and on-site support services to the city’s homeless.