Every Wednesday, regardless of soaring or frigid temperatures, Dr. Bryan Tune and his street medicine team can be found on the streets of Madera and Fresno, providing no-cost primary health care services to residents in the area, including those who are unhoused or lack basic medical care.
The street medicine team includes Tune as the primary clinician, along with two medical assistants, a housing case manager, a community health worker, a harm reduction specialist and one or two nurse practitioner students in the Master of Science in Nursing program at Fresno State.
The team typically begins its day at 8 a.m. in Madera on the corner of Fourth Avenue and C Street. Across the street is Saint Joachim’s Church and just down the way is the Holy Family Table soup kitchen. The location makes it an ideal spot for the team to set up its popup tent, complete with a table and a few chairs.
“Usually, people go to the soup kitchen to get their meal in the morning and then they come see us for any health care needs they have,” said Tune, a certified family nurse practitioner and associate professor in the School of Nursing at Fresno State. “Typically, these are people that are unhoused and sleeping in the mission, and because of the large population at need, the sleeping quarters are very tight and communicable diseases and infections, like COVID, flu and skin infections tend to spread like wildfire. So we end up being their primary health care providers and resource team for that.”
Before they can even finish setting up, people are already waiting in line – many of them repeat patients who come week after week.
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