Mobile Unit Brings Health to the People

Maria Jimenez sat patiently Tuesday morning aboard the mobile health-care unit at the San Fernando Gardens housing project.

Waiting to see the doctor about a kidney ailment, Jimenez said she came to the unit because doesn’t have health insurance and can’t afford an office visit.

“Hopefully, the doctor here will give me medication for the pain or a referral to another doctor,” Jimenez said in Spanish.

Like Jimenez, hundreds of working poor and homeless people in the San Fernando Valley are unable to pay for routine doctor’s visits and subsequently rely on emergency rooms as their primary source for care.

To close the gap between impoverished patients and health-care providers, L.A. Family Housing Corp. offers free medical care and social-service counseling to the Valley’s poorer residents through its Homeless Service Center Mobile Unit.

For the first time Tuesday, the mobile unit visited San Fernando Gardens. It is expected to be parked at the corner of Lehigh Avenue and Carl Street from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Tuesday through June 1998, said John Horn, program coordinator for L.A. Family Housing Corp.

To make residents aware of the free health-care and counseling service, Mario Matute, project director at San Fernando Gardens, mounted a door-to-door campaign encouraging residents to take advantage of the services.

At 9 a.m. only a handful of people had trickled from their apartments to the mobile unit.

Still, Horn remained optimistic. “Sometimes people think that we are INS agents,” he said. “We have to reassure them that we are not going to put them in the unit and take them somewhere. We are just here to provide services.”

Hesitating to come out to the unit can hurt patients over time, said Dr. Gordon Van Tassell, medical director at Valley Community Clinic and the attending physician aboard the unit.

Many of the city’s homeless and poor suffer from “lifestyle diseases,” such as hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol, Van Tassell said. Others are battling serious infections, cancer or the effects of improper use of prescription drugs.

“We want to provide primary preventive care,” Van Tassell said. “If we take care of their basic needs here, we can save them money in the long run.”