Established in the early 1990s, street medicine is the provision of health care directly to people who are unsheltered in their own environment and has evolved from a fringe movement of health care providers to an organized area of medicine, with programs that span the globe. With the largest concentration of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the nation, California is well positioned to scale the street medicine model in order to reach more people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. This study is the first to examine the current state of street medicine in California by asking, answering, and providing recommendations based on ten salient questions, including: (1) Where are street medicine programs in California? (2) Who do street medicine programs serve? (3) What street medicine models of care have been implemented? (4) How are street medicine teams staffed? (5) How are street medicine services funded and what are they funding?
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