A powerful new grant is expected to expand access and health care to some of Northern California's most vulnerable populations, including the homeless. The plan is to embed street medicine training directly into residency programs across multiple hospitals.

The Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation in Grass Valley collaborated with St. Joseph's Foundation of San Joaquin, the Mercy Medical Center Merced Foundation, and the Dominican Hospital Foundation in Santa Cruz to secure a $3 million grant to implement street medicine training into residency programs.

"The idea of street medicine is bringing health care services to people either on the street or, sometimes, it's going to a rural area where folks aren't completely homeless but unstably housed or don't have good transportation," said Dr. Ingrid Bauer, the program director for the grant.

The grant funding will be used to develop a program to meet people where they are, whether they're unhoused, skeptical of the health care system or don't know how to navigate it.

"It's going to be learning about the different cultural backgrounds of the people in the community where you're training, and understanding where people might be coming from," Bauer said.

Sandra Barrington, executive director of the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation, said the idea was to look at different types of populations.

"We're a smaller, older, rural population, but we have St. Joe's in Stockton, that is a more diverse, urban population," she said.

Barrington said it's important to build trust with someone in need of care, especially the more vulnerable populations on the street.

"There's substance use issues sometimes, behavioral health issues, mental health... It's different than when you're in the office. You might be going to an encampment several times a week," she said.

The initiative aims to add a new rotation to the residency program where future doctors can opt in to learn how to better assist vulnerable populations out in the field.

"But also how to navigate them through the system with our counties, our cities, and other nonprofit partners to make sure someone has all the resources they need. Knowing how to guide someone through the system is an additional part of this training," Barrington said.

Bauer said it's a five-year project, and they hope to get people in the rotations by the end of next year.

"We're really hoping to bring more resources and then actually have more trained doctors who are then able to provide the services that might not be able to be done by a county public health nurse," Bauer said.