Venice Family Clinic’s street medicine team is transforming the way it treats homeless individuals by bringing a mobile clinic van straight to them.
Many challenges come with providing healthcare to homeless individuals: they may be mistrustful, unable to travel to a clinic, or unable to maintain their treatments due to mental health conditions. By bringing medical treatment directly to where people are living on the streets or in shelters, healthcare workers are able to serve a much broader portion of the homeless population.
These medical interventions help stabilize the mental and physical health of unhoused individuals and make it easier for them to transition into housing solutions.
For years Venice Family Clinic’s street medicine teams have been serving this population on foot with backpacks of medical supplies, and while this work will continue it will be greatly enhanced by the new mobile clinic.
Thanks to a generous donation from Barry Meyer and Wendy Smith Meyer, the mobile clinic van lets medical providers offer a broader range of services in a shorter amount of time.
“Getting labs done in the field and having a more of a care team on site I can move much faster in treating patients, but more importantly I can treat them more extensively,” said Coley M. King, DO, director of homeless services.
The mobile clinic allows healthcare workers to draw blood, obtain other samples, provide rapid HIV and Hepatitis C testing, and give medically assisted drug and alcohol treatments.
According to King, homeless individuals suffer from the same main health risks as the rest of the population—heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, cancer—but these conditions are often accelerated by the conditions of living outdoors and under constant stress.
“Beyond that, there’s a tremendous amount of overdose and substance use substance dependence. It’s kind of a self survival technique when someone is in so much distress and so much pain,” said King. “It’s a consequence of an inherently flawed and failed community mental health system.”
It’s no secret that many homeless individuals are mentally ill, but the reason behind this epidemic is less known.
In the late sixties and seventies mental health hospitals were deinstitutionalized across America due to the ethical concerns around treatment and forced hospitalization. In 1967, California passed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which virtually abolished involuntary hospitalization and made it difficult to get patients back into the hospital if they relapsed.
Many of these facilities were harmful and needed to be dismantled. Unfortunately, they were not replaced by a robust community mental health system.
According to King, today many people with severe mental illness like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are unable to get the support they need and fall into homelessness as a result. Once on the street their conditions are often exacerbated by isolation, drug use, and hardship.
Venice Family Clinic is working to rebuild a comprehensive community mental health system and their street team is a key part of the solution.
“By providing homeless individuals with mental health medications that help them get more organized so they can get into housing we’re not saving the whole world, but we are getting some people the help they need,” said King.
The Venice Family Clinic treats around 27,000 people in need annually including 4,500 homeless individuals across West LA, with a focus on Venice and Santa Monica. The team looks forward to reaching more people with the new mobile clinic.
Clara@smdp.com
