Primary care training and enhancement -- residency training in street medicine - the MLK community healthcare internal medicine residency program will train twenty-five residents in street medicine…

The Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration Bureau of Health Professionals awarded Martin Luther King, JR. Community Hospital $985,720 on July 1, 2026, under the Primary Care Training and Enhancement program (CFDA 93.884) to fund residency training in street medicine.

The hospital will train twenty-five internal medicine residents through didactic and experiential instruction in partnership with its Street Medicine Department. Residents will deliver direct care to unhoused patients in Los Angeles County Service Planning Area 6—a federally designated medically underserved area and health professional shortage area—working in encampments, alleyways, motels, shelters, and parks. They will work under physician supervision alongside an interprofessional team including an outreach coordinator, nurse practitioner, registered nurse, and clinical staff. The target population includes an estimated 13,886 unsheltered individuals, 22 percent of whom have a substance use disorder and 25 percent of whom have serious mental illness; the majority face transportation barriers to healthcare.

The project period runs through June 30, 2031. Place of performance is Los Angeles, California. The Primary Care Training and Enhancement program supports enhanced training for the primary care workforce; this award is structured as a Residency Training in Primary Care (RTPC) track that develops rural and underserved training within an existing accredited residency program.

Primary care training and enhancement -- residency training in street medicine - the MLK community healthcare internal medicine residency program will train twenty-five residents in street medicine through didactic and experiential training in partnership with our health system's street medicine department. Residents will serve the MLK community healthcare population who live in LOS angeles county service planning area 6. This area is federally designated as both medically underserved and a health professional shortage area. MLK community healthcare requests a funding preference for the program on the basis that our curriculum prepares practitioners to serve underserved populations, all required clinical training occurs within a medically underserved area, the entire residency program exists within a medically underserved area, and our faculty spends 100% of their time providing or supervising care within a medically underserved area. There are an estimated 13,886 unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in the south LOS angeles service planning area 6 (https://WWW.lahsa.ORG/documents?ID=8158-SPA-6-HC2024-data-summary). The project will address the needs of our population's unhoused patients, 22% of whom have a substance use disorder, 25% of whom have a serious mental illness, and a majority of whom have transportation barriers to healthcare. The project will also address the needs of our residents who are interested in serving safety net populations but require experience and expertise to treat unhoused patients, who are among the most vulnerable patients within such communities. Residents will work in on-the-ground street medicine teams delivering care directly to unhoused patients in the encampments, alleyways, motels, shelters and parks where they live. Under supervision of a physician, residents will train alongside an interprofessional team including an outreach coordinator/ community liaison, a nurse practitioner, a registered nurse and a licensed clinical social worker. Over the course of a three-year residency, each resident will complete two two-week street medicine rotations and train in an innovative resident longitudinal street medicine continuity clinic. Through the continuity clinic model, residents will visit the same geographic location in the community for one day every six weeks. As a result, unhoused patients can develop ongoing relationships with resident providers, and residents will experience treating an unhoused patient over time, providing interventions for chronic primary and behavioral health problems as well as barriers posed by social determinants of health. The street medicine residency will also include regular didactic lectures about cultural competency, interviewing unhoused patients, trauma-informed care, social determinants of health, harm reduction, the impact of street sweeps in LOS angeles, and more topics of importance to treating unhoused patients.