Street Medical Teams To Deploy To Hollywood

HOLLYWOOD, CA — A USC program to bring medical care to people living on the streets will expand to Hollywood with a $1 million-funding boost, the Los Angeles City Council decided Tuesday.

The decision to expand the USC street medicine pilot program, which began in November 2021 as the first full-time, city-funded street medicine team, will triple the number of teams conducting outreach care. It will enable medical teams to serve around 900 patients at full capacity, according to Mayor Eric Garcetti.

"USC is unique because it just doesn't wait for people," Garcetti said at a briefing Tuesday. "It goes one-by-one to each patient that they serve."

Councilwoman Nithya Raman said the street medicine team is critical.

"This type of care can mean the difference between life and death," Raman said. "Scaling up a system like this, programs like these that can embrace people who need shelter and who need care with a city that we know can offer it right to them."

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez claimed that Los Angeles County should be doing more to fund such programs.

"But here we are again, the city of Los Angeles, funding the very services and intervention that the county should be stepping up to the plate to provide," Rodriguez said. "It's why we need to continue to advance our work and our progress in building that collaborative response model with the county of Los Angeles."

City News Service