Press Release

Keck School’s Street Med program featured in Sunday LAT

February 18, 2020
Brett Feldman, Eddie Menacho and Gabrielle Johnson work as part of the Street Medicine team at USC, which provides medical care to people who are living on the streets. (Photo/Chris Shinn)

More positive media coverage of the USC Street Med program, this time in The Sunday Los Angeles Times.

The story takes the reader into the weekday routine of the program, run by Brett Feldman, a physician assistant who’s also a clinical assistant professor of family medicine at the Keck School.

Feldman and three other staffers travel by van to homeless encampments in downtown Los Angeles to administer basic care, including dressing cuts and scrapes that inevitably come when living in harsh conditions.

Each weekday morning at 8, the USC team heads out in its van, the trunk piled with blankets, tents, mattresses and socks.

Feldman first identifies patients by connecting with homeless people already admitted to USC’s county hospital. After the patients are discharged, the team follows up with them wherever they live, a twist on a doctor house call.

Often these patients will point them to other people nearby who are even more ill.

“We get referrals from one bridge to the next,” Feldman said.

Read more about Street Med on the Keck School website. And here’s a USC News story from last summer about the program.