Street medicine team takes to Anaheim streets to care for homeless, encourages services

Matt Hurst, 52, a formerly homeless man who lived on the streets for “10 years or more,” had always been “standoffish” when offered services in the past.

It was an offer of dog food for his bull terrier, Minnie, from Health Care in Action’s Street Medicine Team that cracked through his wall of skepticism, he said.

“When they did that, it just opened me up.”

With repeated interactions with the team, trust was established and Hurst accepted the offer of services. Hurst and Minnie recently moved into their first one-bedroom apartment.

Hurst along with other formerly unhoused individuals joined with local and regional public officials on Thursday for the launch of CalOptima Health’s Street Medicine Program in a third Orange County city: Anaheim, which according to the point in time count of unsheltered people in January had 600 people living on the streets.

The Street Medicine program is a partnership between CalOptima Health, the county’s publicly funded healthcare provider; the local city, in this case Anaheim; and Healthcare in Action, a nonprofit operation providing medical, behavioral health, addiction, housing navigation and other services by meeting people where they are, on the streets.

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CalOptima Health and their street medicine provider Healthcare in Action launched their mobile doctor’s office in Anaheim, CA on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Healthcare in Action received a two-year, $2.5 million grant to fund the program.

One of his case managers guided Hurst through the process of obtaining a birth certificate and other documentation to help with getting housing and other services and he’s getting the health and other support, he said, to be successful.

“I’m still in awe,” Hurst said. “I’m in a place now. I’ve got everything I need for the place. I feel like a human being again, because I’ve been out there a decade and I didn’t even feel human after a while.”

And since overcoming his own resistance to accepting services, Hurst has convinced others who were on the streets with him to take the help being offered by the Street Medicine Team.

With its mobile medical van – a doctor’s office on wheels – the Street Medicine Team is designed to serve the homeless community in parks, under freeways, behind buildings and other places where people are making their shelter.

The program launched in Garden Grove in April 2023 and expanded into Costa Mesa this August.

“Our Street Medicine Program meets our unhoused members where they are and brings ongoing primary and social care directly to them,” said Kelly Bruno-Nelson, executive director of CalOtima’s Medi-Cal/CalAIM initiative. “Access to primary care is an important outcome of the program, but at CalOptima Health we know that there is no more powerful medicine than housing, which is why connecting these members to permanent housing is also the goal of the program.”

The Street Medicine Team had success, for example, making initial contacts with homeless individuals at the First Presbyterian Church in Garden Grove, known to many as “shower church” for offering food and allowing people to shower.

“That is what we do,” said Diana Meier, manager for Healthcare in Action’s Street Medicine programs. “We always plan the day before so we schedule the appointments with the members either medical or case management, and then the extra time we do canvassing.”

Homelessness is the defining issue impacting society today, Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said, and the No.1 concern of residents and business owners.

“It is the dual tragedy that slowly destroys lives while impacting neighborhoods such as those around us,” Aitken said.

But merely treating unhoused individuals for their medical issues and leaving them on the streets “is not humane and it’s not sustainable,” she said.

“This is about primary care as that important first step to getting people off the streets,” Aitken said. “Street medicine can take place on our streets, but it is a pathway out of homelessness.”