Dr. Williams on STOMP

Roots definitely stood out to me as

somewhere that

aligned with my interest especially when

it came

to having a street medicine focus it was

one of the few clinics that had a street

medicine team at the time so that was um

a huge part of my

decision Dr NOA set out

to breach populations that were

not being

seen so this

program 100% follows

that

mission she started with black men who

were coming out of prison or in the

prison

system a very marginalized population

and then stop focus on focuses on those

who are unhoused which is another

marginalized population

so

it's What's The Phrase the other side of

the same coin

over for

Stomp and at the

time stomp went everywhere in Oakland

from East Oakland all the way to West

Oakland so there was only

really

roots and perhaps lifelong might have

had one team at the time

um but really it was really like I don't

know we you have to ask doct no how but

I don't know the exact origin origin but

I want to say when I joined they were

really only like us and lifelong at the

time and now it's like expanded to have

so many Street teams so in a way I feel

like we pioneered we help Pioneer Street

medicine in Alam

County um and then so we see anyone who

is homeless we go Direct to them so we

go directly to the

encampment um we have a vehicle at the

time when I first started we had like a

smaller like shuttle looking bus but it

was equipped but with an exam table and

everything and we went everywhere then

we expanded to have a bigger mobile bus

that had two Clinic rooms in it so I was

able to do much more but we basically do

any kind of anything you could possibly

do in the office meaning

all elements of primary care um we can

do photomy on the bus we can we can

basically replicate just about anything

that we can do in the clinic on this

bus um and so we would go around to

every encampment that was that we could

that was visible and some that even

weren't um we would walk along railroad

tracks um so we really provided like

full service care to

to the unhoused

population say it's being able to

get the unhoused

housed lately we've been able to

really

truly reduce the number that are out

there when I first started there weren't

really many housing options it was just

a couple shelters in Oakland but now

we're really able to actually get our

clients

Apartments so that's been my favorite

part is to really

help them help transform their lives and

get them off of the street

because I found

that I can help them a lot more

medically when we get them

housed otherwise it's more putting a

Band-Aid on a

problem but housing is the most

important thing that we could

do

remove a huge

barrier to receiving medical

care a lot of these clients are not able

to get to the

clinic

physically whether that's because of

Transportation lack of

knowledge substance

abuse lack of finances but there's a a

variety of reasons why people don't make

it into the clinic and can't make it to

a scheduled day and time of an

appointment so this removes that barrier

of just all the

systemic challenges you face when just

making an appointment and having to show

up and having to have documents and all

these things and all these um

elements just removes that you go

straight to them and just talk to the

people provide services directly to

them I would say this program

is trailblazing like we're

literally creating as we go

along it is an Ever Changing field and

we adapt to what the patients need in

real

time and to have that at Roots is very

unique because Street medicine is a very

new field

surprisingly and we're a part of a wider

team in California and other states too

that have Street

medicine so I would say it's

just very empowering to be a part of

this process until like step and to set

the stage for

future improvements and developments in

this

field they should know that the funding

of this program is changing currently it

was previously like 100%

funded I want to say

federally but let's just say it was 100%

funded before

um through grants it was 100% funded

through grants and now we're having to

change our structure in real

time in order to get reimbursed through

insurances which could pose a challenge

to the longevity of the program if we

aren't able to keep

up with this unforeseen

demand meaning we don't know yet if we

will be able

to have enough numbers to fund the

program of who we

see before when it was 100% funded by

Grant it didn't matter so much how many

people I saw it was more so about the

quality of the visits and now I worry

that it might be about numbers

in

quantity but it's still

unfolding

so

if we find other ways of keeping the

program

afloat without having to rely

on insurance

reimbursements this

would benefit the unow

population in the future to keep our

program

going that we also need more help with

housing efforts and like

really increasing the amount of people

we have doing the housing Outreach in

the

community

um we did not have a team that existed

solely for housing purposes

um for at least the stomp clients before

and so that we've over the last year

been

developing maybe a year and a half now

developing this housing program but that

did not exist before and so it's also

something that

we're growing in real time and so what I

can see so far is that we need more so I

don't know where the funding is coming

from exactly for the housing team

but the

more we have the more weend house and

what we're doing so far is working but

it's

just slow