By Sara Cardine
Daily Pilot
COSTA MESA, Calif — After CalOptima Health officials announced in January that its new street medicine program would provide on-the-spot medical care to unhoused individuals in Costa Mesa, a van outfitted with medical equipment and service providers is ready to roll.
Leaders from the Orange County healthcare plan joined Costa Mesa officials Wednesday at the city’s Norma Hertzog Community Center to introduce the public to the program and its newly selected service provider, Celebrating Life Community Health Center.
The Mission Viejo-based nonprofit operates six clinics and health centers countywide, including a facility in Costa Mesa, and was recently tapped by CalOptima to provide care from inside the custom-built vehicle- turned- mobile exam room.
Advertisement A clinic on wheels, the van is already making regular rounds in areas where people who need primary care doctors, specialists and mental health providers but may lack the resources to access that care are known to congregate.
“Homelessness is a complex problem and it demands a complex solution, " Kelly Bruno-Nelson, executive director of Medi-Cal and CAL for CalOptima Health, said in an interview ahead of Wednesday’s conference.
“Our street medicine approach is a proactive program, so it identifies folks and then provides ongoing care. When you live on the street, oftentimes you don’t have that.”
Along with offering primary care, the mobile van and its team of practitioners and peer navigators will help clients enroll in programs that assist with housing location, transportation needs and behavioral health services.
In Costa Mesa, the initial point of contact will be with workers from Celebrating Life Community Health Center, an organization that since 2018 has served 11, 500 underserved and low-income residents throughout Orange County.
Dr. Sabrina Cooley, an associate medical director with CLCHC and the supervising physician for Costa Mesa’s street medicine program, said once the organization received grant funding from CalOptima, leaders began looking for staff members with just the right skill sets to meet the needs of the clients with whom they’d be interfacing.
Boosting behavioral health services with innovative partnerships
In addition to a board-certified life and family nurse practitioner, the van will be staffed with an associate clinical social worker who can provide behavioral health counseling, a program manager, a program director for street medicine and two peer navigators with lived experience who can reach out to patients and potential clients on a personal level.
“This team, they are passionate and they are ready to roll, " Cooley said. “It’s incredible — they’re already developing all the local partnerships with the police and fire departments, the shelters and the homeless coalition in Costa Mesa and the city. It’s a collaborative effort.”
CalOptima Health launched its first street medicine program as a pilot in Garden Grove in March 2023 and has since served more than 300 low-income individuals, connecting 15 people to housing vouchers and permanent housing.
“These are the folks who are most difficult to reach and the folks people have often given up on, " Bruno-Nelson said of the program’s clientele.
In addition to Costa Mesa, CalOptima is also working on building a program in Anaheim designed to meet the specific needs of that community. Leaders of the health plan believed Costa Mesa was an ideal location for the still-growing program, due to the many investments the city has already made to address homelessness.
While the agency is paying to initiate the program, the care of patients who become enrolled in Medi-Cal will then be reimbursed by the state, eventually creating a self-sustaining funding model. Bruno-Nelson said the goal is to bring aboard 150 patients in the first 18 months.
Costa Mesa Mayor John Stephens did not attend Wednesday’s event but said in a separate interview the new program is not only in keeping with the city’s core value of compassion but the perfect introduction to other social service programs.
“To have someone providing healthcare is an entree for beginning to introduce someone to our housing services, " he said. “So all of this works together as a suite of care to get people to where they ‘re healthy and they ‘re sheltered.”
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