Hamilton County Health Department unveils first two mobile health units

Hamilton County Health Department staff and officials in front of the agency’s first ever mobile health units.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- The Hamilton County Health Department unveiled their latest tool Tuesday to reach our most vulnerable populations.

The Hamilton County Health Department unveiled  two mobile health units, with one of those to be specifically for the homeless.

These units will effectively be medical examination rooms on wheels, allowing the Hamilton County Health Department to conduct the majority of their on-site operations at their downtown location remotely.

The administrator for the Hamilton County Health Department, Sabrina Novak, said, “You can’t continue to provide services in the way you historically did it because the needs are different…  If you have transportation barriers, what is one of the easiest ways for us to address that? It’s not necessarily gas cards or bus tickets/passes, it’s also taking these services to the citizens where they’re at.”

The transportation issue is key to the deployment of these units as it can take up to an hour to go across the county.

Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp said, “If we’re going to provide services as well as we can to citizens in every station of life and in every neighborhood, then we’re going to have to be creative.”

One of the advantages touted by county health officials is that these buses can go anywhere in the 530 square miles of Hamilton County.

They say this especially important given the changing characteristics of Hamilton County’s homeless population over the past five years.

Karen Guinn, the director of homeless health services in Hamilton County, said, “We see the population dispersing for a lot of different reasons. Our health clinic, and it was originally developed there for a reason.”

Guinn says that our homeless population does face unique health challenges.

She said, “We have an aging homeless population as well, and so many of them haven’t had healthcare over the span of their life, and so they develop chronic diseases, and for ongoing management and treatment of those conditions, we realize that this is a need.”

These units will be deployed in conjunction with local organizations to best serve the needs of these disadvantaged populations.