Medicine on the Move has now been in existence for a year and the program’s two vans are making their way around Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center’s vast service area.
The idea was conceived a little more than two years ago, but was slowed by COVID-19, Regional Dean Dr. Timothy Benton said. There are two vans now.
One van is affiliated with the Caring Foundation of Texas. It is used more for vaccine delivery and those vaccines are offered through the Texas Vaccines for Children Program, through the Department of State Health Services. The vans also offer blood pressure and diabetes screenings and educational materials on those topics and others related to lifestyles medicine.
“The idea is for them to reach the entire Permian Basin,” Benton said. “Where they go depends on building those partnerships and community relationships. They currently go where those relationships are established. But always, every day we are continuing to build new relationships, or attempting to.”
There are four physicians available who are lifestyle medicine boarded. They also are surveying the region and people they come in contact with on social determinants of health, which fits into lifestyles and population health assessment. In the long term, they can begin to identify areas of need for the community and region.
Benton said they partner with the School of Nursing, School of Health Professions and the Physician Assistant program and there are five to 10 people at a time.
One of the vans will carry telemedicine equipment.
“It is currently rolling and doing the educational programs similar to what I’ve described. But the telemedicine has not been operational yet, pending acquiring the equipment,” Benton said. As of March 15, he said they expected the equipment within a month.
It has been a team effort to create Medicine on the Move, but it was a concept that Benton came up with in trying to create “access points in between existing physical access points to help engage patients into the health care system.”
He said he has heard positive things from physicians, faculty members and students who go out into the community.
“Certainly our our students love it. They love getting out into the community and seeing a different perspective of healthcare and opportunities for healthcare delivery outside the walls of a clinic building,” Benton said.
He added that healthcare delivery outside of the clinic walls is kind of the point.
“It’s a method to reach people that may not be engaged in the healthcare system because they are geographically separated from it,” Benton said.
