Northwell medical team, LI homeless coalition take healthcare to unhoused people

At a wooden picnic table in Amityville’s Peterkin Park, nurse practitioner Jennifer Stevens asks John Santomauro how he has been feeling since changing some of his daily medications. Another Northwell employee takes Santomauro’s blood pressure as Stevens listens, jotting down Santomauro’s responses on a laptop.

After completing the checkup, Stevens gives Santomauro a drawstring bag with water, sunscreen, T-shirts, a cooling towel and a first-aid kit before he and his partner, Natasha Rodriguez, leave the park.

Santomauro is one of 114 regular patients in Northwell Health’s Street Medicine program, which operates in collaboration with the Long Island Coalition for the Homeless. Established in May 2024, the program connects homeless people with healthcare practitioners.

"I don’t have anybody to push me in the right direction or guide me. ... They were something I needed. I needed guidance," Santomauro, 46, said.

 He added, "A friend will pick you up instead of pulling you down to his misery. He’ll let you pull him up into happy. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re making us happy."

As summer temperatures rise, the street medicine team meets patients in parks, at gas stations and at encampments in the woods. A recent Department of Housing and Urban Development count, led by LICH, found over 4,500 homeless adults and children on Long Island, the highest count since 2007.

Santomauro and Rodriguez spent 10 months living in an encampment before the LICH helped get them into a shelter in Amityville. They have been seeing Northwell’s Street Medicine team for just over a year and a half.

"They’re good people," Santomauro said.

Dylan Schwarz, an LICH senior street medicine liaison, sat taking notes during the checkup. He suggested the nearest pharmacy to send their prescriptions to as Stevens finished updating their charts.

Schwarz said the street medicine program has helped Long Island’s homeless population get better healthcare.

"When I was in the coalition before this role, I was a street outreach worker, so I was working with clients on the street before we had street medicine partnerships," Schwarz said. "And we saw how difficult it was for them to access doctors — or, even if they in theory could access them, just how difficult it was for them to make it a priority because there’s so much else."

Homelessness increases risk of infectious and non-infectious diseases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homeless people also face mental health conditions, substance abuse disorders, diabetes and heart and lung disease at higher rates.

Northwell practitioners and LICH liaisons meet on a video call each Monday to discuss that week’s client needs. The team typically goes out to meet clients twice a week and sees four to five clients each day. LICH liaisons like Schwarz help the clients access their prescriptions, get to other doctor’s appointments and choose a location to meet up with Northwell’s team.

Dr. Debbie Salas-Lopez, Northwell’s executive vice president of Community and Population Health, says the program is "really about going out to meet people where they are."

"We do know that people who are unhoused are unhoused because of unfortunate circumstances, and so we don’t come in with preconceived notions or biases as to why that individual is here, nor do we judge him," Salas-Lopez said.

For Salas-Lopez, who grew up in the South Bronx with four siblings, the program is a way to give back as a physician.

"I know what housing insecurity is because I lived in it, and I knew that my parents couldn’t worry about healthcare for themselves or for their children because they were sometimes worried about where we would live month to month. So for me, this is personal," Salas-Lopez said.

After visiting Santomauro and Rodriguez, the street medicine team got back in their van to meet another patient, Ambrus Orban, at a gas station in Lake Ronkonkoma. Orban, 62, has been living in an encampment in the woods for a decade. He keeps Stevens’ contact information taped to the back of his phone.

“They’re basically almost a second family,” Orban said. “We became very close to one another. They understand my issues, and they help me as much as they can. They never steer me wrong.”