New mobile clinics put UCSD medical students on the move

The UC San Diego School of Medicine opened its student-run free clinic in 1997, gradually expanding to the four locations inside local churches that it has today.
While those sites do bring doctors in the making much closer to the people of modest means who need them the most, it is impossible to create one in every neighborhood that could benefit.
A solution was on display at UCSD’s East Campus Medical Center Monday. Guests kicked the tires of the university’s two new mobile clinics, one for general medicine and another for mammography, chatting with some of the medical students who have been offering free screening tests and other services in several locations across the city since the program launched last August.
Already there is a waiting list of medical school students interested in experiencing medicine that moves.
The effort is the brainchild of Dr. Crystal Cené, chief administrative officer and associate chief medical officer of health equity at UCSD. The medical school recently added a “mobile health” elective course, signing up 19 students to participate. Since August, the clinic has provided 2,200 health screenings, including 3D mammograms, blood pressure evaluations and diabetes and cardiovascular testing.
Several med students work together in the mobile clinics to see patients in a range of different locations throughout the city. The general clinic is a converted motorhome with modern slide-out sections that allow it to provide two exam rooms complete with testing equipment, air conditioning and other amenities necessary to do basic examinations.
The mammography clinic is built on a commercial truck chassis, a structure sturdy enough to haul the specialized X-ray machine necessary to perform scans wherever it stops.
For the moment, services are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Providers collect contact information from patients so they can communicate screening results when they become available.
“These mobile clinics are ushering in a new evolution in that legacy of meeting people where they are, literally and figuratively, by bringing care with dignity to the community,” Cené said.
The internal medicine specialist said that, while health screenings have been the main services offered in the two mobile clinics to date, the plan is to use these resources to research how the ability to visit patients can help close the treatment loop after discharge.
“We are investigating a model where people who’ve been to the emergency department, but who live in communities that have more barriers to access,” Cené said. “We think that, if we pull that data, we can figure out why people are going to the emergency department for something that we can handle.”
If mobile clinics could help prevent unnecessary emergency department visits, or if they could follow up with patients after they’re sent home and make sure they’re following medical recommendations, the result could be both better health and savings for the health system.
For second-year UCSD medical student Bryan Trieu, who has volunteered in the mobile clinic since its first post outside the Mexican Consulate downtown, the opportunity to meet with real patients in the city where he grew up is the ultimate break from the classroom.
“It’s encouraging because you see a lot of people who are thankful for any care they get, and just having conversations with them, you realize how much of medicine is outside of just learning about cells and organs,” Trieu said.
Congressmembers Sara Jacobs and Juan Vargas and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla collaborated to provide $1.1 million in total community project funding for the mobile units.
Jacobs, who attended Monday’s event, said she like the proposal because of its ability to reach neighborhoods that have less access to medical care.
“We need to fix our systems in general so that people aren’t living on the streets and aren’t having such trouble accessing care,” she said. “But while we’re fixing the bigger system, we also need to be investing in things like this, where we’re actually getting resources out to the places where they’re needed.”