Mobile Health Program

Empowering underserved communities to develop sustainable systems that increase access to health promotion, disease prevention and health care services. Its holistic approach is accomplished through direct interaction and partnership with the community by family medicine physicians, program staff, community health workers, interns, pre-med and medical students, and family medicine residents.

Mobile Health Program Service Provision

Through education and training, health promotion, disease prevention and community development efforts, the MHP addresses these core functions and direct health services:

To inform, educate and empower people about health issues
To develop policies and procedures that support individual and community health efforts
To link people to needed personal health services
To assure the provision of health care when otherwise not available

The program employs an integrated process of:

Setting priorities
Regional and community planning
Developing strategies to offer a continuum of services while building community capacity
Taking direct action
Measuring success

Mobile Health team in front of mobile clinic

The Mobile Health Program consists of paid staff and health professions students from Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, including residents and medical students from the CUP program, and non-student volunteers from the community who generously give of their time.

Community health workers are professional employees who provide health promotion, education and wellness services directly to members of the community. The Community Health Worker (CHW)/Promotora training program, which the MHP helped to establish in 1994, involves people from the community who are trained as lay health workers. They increase the community’s health and well-being through advocacy, information and referrals, and teach community members how to navigate the health and human services system. They provide an essential link to underserved patients in rural or lower-income urban areas. They can be paid employees or volunteers who:

Provide outreach and culturally appropriate health education and information
Build bridges between communities and the health and social service systems
Assure that patients or clients obtain the services that they need

Who We Serve

Each year the Mobile Health Program provides patient services to about 2,400 persons in southern Arizona where little or no health care services are available. No one is turned away, regardless of ability to pay for services.

The program primarily provides services to the medically underserved or uninsured people of southern Arizona, including basic wellness and preventive care for people with acute and chronic conditions. It also has the capacity to do diabetes education via telemedicine and diabetic retinopathy screening using a non mydriatic camera. This program uses state-of-the-art technology, including telemedicine to provide blindness prevention services to uninsured people with diabetes.

Since 2003, approximately 225 uninsured women have received prenatal care for the whole family in an innovative Group Prenatal Care project, a cost-effective way to provide excellent prenatal care to women and their babies who might otherwise receive none. In collaboration with family medicine residents and faculty from the College of Medicine – Tucson, the MHP staff provides prenatal care, counseling, and prenatal and postpartum health education. Deliveries take place at the Banner – University Medical Center.

Where We Serve

Each project or program serves specific areas of southern Arizona, from rural areas to low-income urban areas. The communities served include the Old Nogales Highway Colonia or Summit View, and underserved communities within the city of Tucson including Littletown, Elvira and Banks Elementary.

The Mobile Health Program was established in 1976 as part of the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Health pioneers Augusto Ortiz, MD, and his wife, Martha Ortiz, were the founders of the Mobile Health Program and its mobile clinic. At the time, the Mobile Health Program was part of the Rural Health Office. In 2001, the Rural Health Office and the Mobile Health Program moved to the College of Public Health, and it has since been moved to the Department of Family and Community Medicine. The program has evolved and expanded over the years based on requests from needy areas and the availability of funding.

Funding

Financially, the Mobile Health Program is sustained by private donations, grants and the Ortiz Endowment, which was established in 2000 by Dr. Andy Nichols to serve as a permanent sponsorship fund. If you are able to give, your donations are critical for providing medical care to those who need it most. You can help alleviate needless human suffering.

Ortiz Endowment

Program Partners

In addition to partnerships within the College of Medicine – Tucson, including the Family Medicine Residency Program, the Arizona Telemedicine Program and the Department of Ophthalmology, the Mobile Health Program collaborates with many community agencies, including: