A retired Sacramento professor is creating a hospice center for the terminally ill experiencing homelessness.
"Everybody should have that opportunity to die with respect, dignity and love," she said. "These are people with heart disease, cancer, AIDS -- whatever serious terminal illness -- that otherwise would be on the street, and die on the street."
Fitzwater is a retired professor with UC Davis School of Medicine, a professor emeritus at Sacramento State and the founder of the nonprofit Health Communication Research Institute.
The Sacramento facility is named after her 34-year-old grandson who died in 2014 while homeless in Nebraska.
Joshua’s House will be among just a handful in the country offering this type of end-of-life care -- and is the first in the West Coast.
“It really struck me when I was at UC Davis working in the cancer center and learning some of the people we were treating were homeless,” she explained. "They can be treated at a local hospital, but we don't have enough MediCal beds, we don't have 24-hour shelters, we don't have places where hospice care could be provided."