TAMPA — The group gathers in a lot on the corner of Franklin and Estelle streets in downtown Tampa every other Friday.
Against the backdrop of an empty parking lot and a building covered in a graffiti mural, the University of South Florida medical students and faculty prepare bags stocked with over-the-counter medication, socks, thermometers and hygiene products.
Their patients — members of Tampa's homeless community — begin to form in groups on the sidewalk adjacent to the lot, waiting patiently for checkups.
"We saw that there's this group who are out of the public eye, kind of tucked away, who share a disproportionate rate of morbidity and mortality," third-year medical student Michael Manasterski said.
"Mainstream medicine has had a hard time reaching these folks mainly because they have a difficulty maintaining appointments, because they are underinsured or have difficulty getting to regular doctor visits."
Manasterski is one of the founding members of Tampa Bay Street Medicine, a group of USF Morsani College of Medicine students and health professionals who are helping to bridge a growing health care gap.
Tampa has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the region, but it is also considered a hub for health care resources — something Tampa's roughly 2,200 homeless men, women and children desperately need.
With the help of faculty and physician advisers from the college, the teams have gone out more than 20 times since May, hoping to create a sustainable program that provides much-needed medical care to the homeless.
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The concept of street medicine began in the United States with Dr. Jim Withers in Pittsburgh, Pa.
In 1992, Withers began dressing up as a homeless person and took to the streets of Pittsburgh to deliver medical checkups with the aid of a former homeless man.
Over time, other groups started similar programs in their cities, resulting in the founding of the Street Medicine Institute, the philosophical and informational head of more than 80 street medicine groups across the country.
Some of the founding members of Tampa Bay Street Medicine attended the International Street Medicine Symposium in November to discuss best practices in street-medicine initiatives and to get a glimpse of how the programs work in other countries.
Eric Monaco, a third-year medical student at USF who began working with the group when it first began its street runs, pointed out some of the tenets set forth by the Street Medicine Institute before a recent outing.
The most important: "Go to the people."
Monaco said the medical checkups and hygiene education that Tampa Bay Street Medicine delivers to a typically overlooked population is really where the value is made clear.
"It's basically like preventative care," he said. "We try to reach them and teach them health care practices before they end up at Tampa General Hospital on death's door and TGH throws all of their expensive medical resources at them, because that's what they have to do as an ER."
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In addition to preventative care and education, the group prides itself on conversation.
The upperclassman and faculty volunteers are generally the ones checking the physical conditions of the patients and looking for warnings signs of disease while first- and second-year medical students engage the patient and attempt to take their medical history.
In the process, students bond with patients, talking about their lives, their passions and life on the streets.
Dr. Waldo Guerrero, an assistant professor of neurology and street medicine faculty adviser, said he encourages meaningful conversation between the homeless and students.
"It's always surprising to me the kind of conversations students have," Guerrero said. "They become so immersed in their conversations with the population they are attempting to serve."
What shocks many of the students is how the stereotypes of homelessness seem to break down, once they engage patients in conversations free from judgment.
"We all have an image of what we expect, but I run into people out there who are educated, they've held down jobs and had decent careers," Manasterski said.
"It's surprising how quickly someone's life can go from normal, middle-class existence to being a twist of fate away from not having anyone to turn to."
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The Tampa Bay Street Medicine organization has been able to sustain itself solely through a $5,000 grant it received from the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.
The group has plans to conduct research to put numbers to the impact it has in keeping the homeless population out of Tampa's emergency rooms. The students are also looking into the viability of partnering with other students and faculty from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences to provide some mental health services.
To do that, however, may require seeking additional funding from the university or the community, Manasterski said.
For now, they remain open to taking on more student and faculty volunteers to reach as many of Tampa's homeless population as they can.
"We want students to get experience with folks on the streets, and get excited about helping the homeless community in innovative ways," Manasterski said.
Contact Roberto Roldan at hillsnews@tampabay.com.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/usfs-tampa-bay-street-medicine-team-connects-with-needy-homeless/2221086
