Street Med Research Presentation

Hello Everyone,


Thank you for taking out your valuable time to read this. I’m Sally and my teammate is Yashini. We are first-generation college graduates and are currently applying for medical school. On our days off from work and applying to medical schools, Yashini and I volunteer at Coachella Valley Volunteers in Medicine (CVVIM), a non-profit clinic that helps the homeless community of the Coachella Valley with medically related needs. Every Tuesday evening, as part of CVVIM we participate in a weekly program called Street Medicine, where groups of doctors, nurses, and scribes go out together to the underserved community, to provide direct medical care to those in need. In contrast to the pristine white sheets of hospital beds, our volunteer team frequents the flimsy houses made out of carton boxes beaten with the heat of the summer, and the park benches that frost up with the coldness of the winter. Through volunteering at Street Medicine, we experience first hand what an underserved community truly encompasses. It’s not just the basic necessities that these people lack. It’s the attention. Being stricken with poverty is not something that anyone would want for themselves or their family. But being rejected by their own community due to their current circumstances poses as the greatest challenge for these people. Working as scribes on the team, we have the privilege week after week to witness the unequivocal attention that the doctors and nurses provide to these patients, even with our constantly limited resources. It is their unprejudiced devotion to care for the patients that drives us even more to one day become compassionate healers just like them.


We love to give back to our community and wanted to do it in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, we started doing research to learn about different ways that we can provide quality care to our homeless community. Our research addresses how working with different non-profit organizations, in a collaborative way, facilitates the relationship between our Street Medicine team and patients, and how it positively increases the number of patients we see. After months of studying, we came up with a research proposal, which titled “A Collaborative Approach to Serving the Homeless”, and submitted it to the Annual Street Medicine Conference, which will be held in Rotterdam, Netherland. We are extremely proud to say that our poster was pregitigiously selected to be presented. We will be presenting our research poster on October 6th, 2018. As of currently, we are still trying to raise money for our travel expenses. If you can donate to our cause, we will truly appreciate it. My teammate and I are presenting to spread new ideas for further intervention and research in the field of street medicine, with the hope that our study inspires others to develop their own street medicine team.  Any amount of money you donate will help us to improve our program and the lives of patients. Thank you very much.









1) Yashini and I, along with our lovely director Rosa Lucas. This was a picture from last Tuesday at a junkyard that our team frequents often.  



2) Our nurses checking on supplies and water before heading out. I think the temperature hit a boiling 123 degrees Fahrenheit during the time this picture was taken. We always remind ourselves to stay well hydrated during this time of the year, especially when we go out. 




3) Our lovely Cyntya pictured on the left is also a scribe on our team. She contributed hugely to the research, but due to circumstances she will not be able to make it to the conference.