For the past three years, Des Moines University (DMU) students have visited homeless camps along the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, faithfully bringing warm clothes, hot coffee, fresh batteries and other simple necessities every Sunday morning.

Beginning next month, the students will be able to offer another necessity – basic medical services – using the Des Moines University Mobile Health Clinic.

“I think the trust that we’ve built up (with the homeless population) has been critical,” said Sikandar Khan, a DMU osteopathic medicine student and president of the university’s Homeless Camp Outreach. With more than 70 student volunteers, the group has spent more than 1,200 person-hours at the camps, with a mission of helping the homeless reconnect with society.

The mobile clinic, a 38-foot customized Winnebago motor home, is equipped with two complete medical examination rooms: one in the rear equipped with a wheelchair ramp and one at the front of the vehicle. The patients will enter a small waiting area, equipped with a bathroom, in the center of the vehicle.

“In the past, we have referred health conditions we have seen to primary care physicians,” Khan said. “But now with the mobile clinic, and using the trust we’ve built, we will be able to provide this adjunct service. So we can say, ‘The mobile clinic is at this location; can we help you get over there?'”

Additionally, “we’ll have one or two students aboard shadowing the physician, assisting in any way we can with our level of experience,” Khan said, “and have two or three outside taking histories of patients prior to coming into the clinic.”

The inspiration for the program came from a mobile clinic that Dr. Kendall Reed, DMU’s dean of osteopathic medicine, saw during a visit to San Diego. “I brought (the idea) back to our leadership and said, ‘I think this is something we need to do,'” Reed said.

Two federal earmarks, each approximately $190,000, were used to purchase and equip the motor home and to pay for operating costs for the initial two years.

The mobile clinic program is a partnership between DMU, which will own and maintain the motor home, and the Free Clinics of Iowa, which will provide volunteers to drive the vehicle. Reed will serve as medical director of the mobile clinic when it’s on its homeless missions.

“Free Clinics of Iowa has been working with the homeless camps for the past three years,” said Wendy Gray, the organization’s executive director. “They’re most comfortable having someone come to where they are living rather than having to come in to a clinic somewhere. This mobile unit will finally enable us to do that.”

The mobile clinic will also be used to augment the services of Grace United Methodist Free Clinic, 3700 Cottage Grove Ave., which is one of 29 free clinics across the state operated by the nonprofit organization. Dr. Larry Severidt, director of the family medicine residency program at Broadlawns Medical Center, will serve as the mobile clinic’s medical director when it’s used in that capacity.

“We’ll be using these two clinics as a trial run for the mobile clinic,” said Karen McLean, DMU’s provost. “Once we feel we have it all nailed, we can expand the program. It would be my hope that once we’re established, we will be using this vehicle every single day.”

Though there are other mobile medical-care services in Iowa, each provides a specialized service, not primary medical care, McLean said.

“It seems like a no-brainer, but once you get into the logistics of it, it’s pretty complicated,” she said. “Free Clinics of Iowa has figured all of these details out for us. That’s why I think this is such a great partnership.

“What I’m shocked about is that even with all of these free clinics, there is still more of a need out there,” McLean said. “This is not anywhere close to meeting the need.”

According to the Iowa Institute for Community Alliances, nearly 17,500 Iowans were homeless in 2008, based on data tracked by agencies that serve the homeless in the state. More than 6,100 homeless people live in Des Moines.

“What we want to do is add the medical component to (the outreach) the students have been doing,” Reed said. “And this will be operated year-round, not just during the pretty months of spring.”

Khan noted that DMU works with other agencies serving the homeless, among them Primary HealthCare Inc., which sends nurses and social workers to the camps.

“We are very mindful that we don’t want to interrupt their continuum of care if they are already seeing those patients,” he said. “That’s why the mobile clinic is only for acute care, not chronic care. “We’ll work with the agencies to see where the greatest need is, and so that we don’t interrupt care they’re providing.”

Reed said a major issue that hasn’t been resolved is where to park the vehicle to provide shelter for the homeless patients while they’re waiting to be seen, particularly in winter.

“We may coordinate with the shelters where they eat,” he said. “That’s going to be a major challenge for us to figure out over the next few months.”