Chicago Street Medicine Information

CSM is a coalition of student-fueled, interdisciplinary street medicine organizations dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the unsheltered homeless in Chicago through service, education, research, and advocacy. Street Medicine is a novel approach to healthcare for the homeless through the radical idea of bringing basic primary care to unsheltered, rough-sleeping, and otherwise homeless individuals. It is doctor’s visits in tent cities, medication counseling in Lower Wacker, wound care in METRA stations, linkage to social work in parking lots, and so much more. It is the provision of care, no matter the location, to those who need it the most, regardless of their ability to engage with traditional structures of healthcare. Beginning in the summer of 2016, a group of medical students and medical residents at UIC began laying the foundations for CSM. In a brief period of time, these students they made connections with other residents, students, and faculty interested in the idea of street medicine. Together, they were able to transcribe the vision of an organization that would be able to provide care in the community and in the hospital into several grant applications and thereby obtained start-up funding. Our value is greater than just patient care. CSM serves as a medical education service, providing hands-on learning to medical students and residents interested in caring for underserved populations. Only so much can be learned within the confines of the existing power dynamic between doctor and patient. Escaping the white coat and sterile clinic to heal on the streets carries with it the opportunity to step into the shoes of another and learn how the marginalized experience care. Much of the healing that occurs on street runs occurs without imaging or blood tests. Street medicine provides a crash course in empathy.