Janelle Goetcheus, physician and healer to D.C.'s homeless, dies at 84

Abandoning plans to be a medical missionary abroad, she devoted herself to the poor of Washington and transformed medical care in the nation’s capital.


Dr. Janelle Goetcheus transformed health care for the poor and homeless in Washington. (Christ House)

By Emily Langer
November 11, 2024 at 10:42 p.m. EST
Janelle Goetcheus did not intend to stay in Washington when she visited the city in 1975. She was only passing through while she and her husband, a United Methodist minister, awaited visas to Pakistan, where they planned to move with their children as missionaries.

Dr. Goetcheus, a physician, had spent a decade as a family doctor in her native Indiana but felt called to take her medical knowledge where it was needed more. When friends in Washington brought her to Jubilee Housing, a low-income housing project in the city’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, she saw the dearth of medical care available to the poor and decided that her place was not in Pakistan, but in the capital of the United States.

The next year, Dr. Goetcheus (pronounced “get-chiz”) and her husband moved their family to Washington, where in 1979 she helped start Columbia Road Health Services, a clinic sponsored by the ecumenical Church of the Saviour that served the poor and homeless in Adams Morgan and nearby neighborhoods. She later helped found Health Care for the Homeless, a citywide project that grew into Unity Health Care, which describes itself as the “largest network of community health centers in the District.”

Working with her husband and several members of the Church of the Saviour, Dr. Goetcheus turned an abandoned building near her original Columbia Road clinic into Christ House, a medical respite center for homeless people who are too ill to be placed in shelters but are deemed too well to be hospitalized. Since Christmas Eve 1985, when Christ House received its first patient, Dr. Goetcheus lived in the building just upstairs from the people she cared for, with no line between patient, doctor and family.

Until the end, their home was her home. Dr. Goetcheus, 84, died at Christ House on Oct. 26. She had lymphoma, according to her daughter, Ann Goetcheus Gehl. Dr. Goetcheus had continued caring for patients until only months before her death, said Mary Jordan, a nurse practitioner and the clinical director at Christ House, who lived alongside Dr. Goetcheus for more than 30 years.


Dr. Goetcheus in 2019. (Unity Health Care)

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Dr. Goetcheus in 2017. (Unity Health Care)

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By Emily Langer
Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. She previously worked for the Outlook and Local Living sections.follow on X @emilylangerWP