Federal Grant Expands Street Medicine Training for Miller School of Medicine Residents
A federally funded initiative will integrate street medicine into residency education at the Miller School of Medicine and Jackson Health System, combining classroom instruction, simulation and community-based clinical rotations.
Key Takeaways
- The Miami Street Medicine Training Initiative will integrate street medicine into residency education at the Miller School of Medicine and Jackson Health System.
- Training will combine classroom instruction, simulation exercises and community-based clinical rotations.
- Residents will learn to provide care in nontraditional settings while examining how housing, income and access to social services affect health.
For years, Armen Henderson, M.D., MBA, has worked to bring health care directly to people living on Miami’s streets, in communities often overlooked by traditional medical systems. Now, Dr. Henderson, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and medical director of Miami Street Medicine, will help lead an ambitious new effort to train future physicians to do the same.
The Miami Street Medicine Training Initiative will integrate street medicine into residency education at the Miller School and Jackson Health System, creating a comprehensive training program focused on caring for people experiencing homelessness.
The initiative also represents the next chapter of a program that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Miami Street Medicine was founded by Daniel Bergholz, M.D., then a University of Miami medical student, who approached Dr. Henderson with the vision of creating a student-led street medicine program embedded within Dade County Street Response’s growing community infrastructure. What began as a small volunteer effort was incubated within Dade County Street Response over the past six years and has evolved into one of the country’s most innovative street medicine programs.
Miami Street Medicine
Today, Miami Street Medicine provides longitudinal primary care directly on the streets while integrating street psychiatry, street dermatology, care coordination and harm reduction into a single, multidisciplinary model. Preliminary outcomes demonstrate that the team is among the few street medicine programs nationally to successfully manage chronic diseases, including hypertension and diabetes, through sustained, street-based primary care.
Much of this work has been led by Miller School students, volunteer physicians, case managers and community health workers, supported through philanthropy and operational funding from the Florida Association of Free and Charitable Clinics (FAFCC).
Now a fellow at Yale University, Dr. Bergholz has remained deeply involved in the program’s growth by mentoring students, shaping curriculum and advising program development, bringing expertise in addiction medicine, harm reduction and street medicine education to help train the next generation of physicians.
What Is Street Medicine?
In this program, street medicine means providing ongoing health care directly to people experiencing homelessness. Miami Street Medicine combines primary care with psychiatry, dermatology, care coordination and harm-reduction services in a multidisciplinary model.
How Will Residents Learn to Provide Care on the Streets?
Building upon this foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration-funded initiative will formally integrate classroom instruction, simulation exercises and immersive, community-based clinical rotations into residency education. Residents will learn the technical skills required to practice medicine in nontraditional settings and understand the structural forces that drive homelessness, substance use disorders and poor health outcomes.
Residents will gain firsthand experience caring for patients whose health is shaped as much by housing instability, income inequality and access to social services as by disease itself.
“Street medicine is about more than medical treatment,” Dr. Henderson said. “It requires understanding the social and structural conditions that shape health, building trust over time and partnering with communities to create lasting change.”
Program leaders hope the initiative will strengthen the pipeline of physicians prepared to care for medically marginalized communities while demonstrating that community-based, longitudinal street medicine can improve outcomes for some of society’s most vulnerable patients.
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Tags: Dade County Street Response, Dr. Armen Henderson, hospital medicine, Miami Street Medicine, opioid addiction