Course gives students a hands-on experience in alumni’s street medicine program

LOS ANGELES — A class of Penn State students closed out the spring semester embedded with street medicine teams while also distributing care packages and tents to unhoused individuals in Southern California.

The students’ hands-on experiential education experience was the culmination of the semester long course, "Interdisciplinary Study of Street Medicine," offered by the Department of Kinesiology in Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development. The course is designed to educate students about the growing systemic problems faced by unhoused individuals, specifically in receiving medical care. It is the first undergraduate street medicine course offered in the United States.

With the support of Penn State Conferences and Institutes, a unit of Penn State Outreach that coordinated the program’s logistics and assessment of the student experience, students spent a week in the greater Los Angeles area attending a street medicine workshop before making rounds in the greater Los Angeles community with professionals from the University of Southern California (USC) Street Medicine program.

Lauren Healy, a Penn State student who graduated this spring with a degree in biobehavioral health, said she went into the class knowing the experience would be impactful, but she did not realize how much.

“A week in Los Angeles working alongside professionals and students from various disciplines taught me more than sitting in a lecture ever could: about dignity, community, resilience, and the complicated but beautiful crossover between healthcare and humanity,” Healy said. “I came to [Los Angeles] thinking I might help change a few lives. I left, realizing my own had changed instead.”

The course is a collaborative effort between faculty in the Penn State Department of Kinesiology and alumni Brett and Corinne Feldman, co-founders of the USC Street Medicine program, which combines medical expertise, social service outreach and cutting-edge research to address the unique challenges faced by the unhoused community in Los Angeles.

According to the Penn State College of Health and Human Development faculty members, unhoused individuals are especially prevalent in urban, densely populated areas of the country, including Los Angeles. Around 50%, about 60,000 people, of California’s unhoused population live in the greater Los Angeles area. Most of them face challenges accessing basic human necessities like food, water, shelter and adequate healthcare.

Inspired by the Feldman’s work, course instructor Lori Gravish Hurtack, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Kinesiology and recipient of a 2025 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching, developed the program in response to the rise in unhoused individuals following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gravish Hurtack said street medicine is a field that requires not just medical expertise, but also humanity, adaptability and a deep respect for the individuals being served. She said it involves meeting people where they are — often literally on the streets — and providing care that respects their dignity and unique circumstances.

Her goal is to give her students the unique opportunity to experience the impactful work that is happening in the streets of Los Angeles and to teach them that they too can make a difference.

For Brett Feldman, who was honored with a 2024 Alumni Fellow Award, the collaboration provides an opportunity to reconnect with his Penn State roots and, hopefully, he said, inspire the students the way he was inspired by Gravish Hurtack while he was an undergrad.

“Penn State being the first and only school in the entire country to have an undergraduate course on street medicine really just means the world to me because it gave me so much. Before I took Lori’s class I didn't even know I wanted to go into medicine,” Feldman said. “She inspired me into medicine and in so many ways the root of this work started with my time at Penn State.”

Charley Vargas, a Penn State kinesiology student who wants to become a physician assistant, said learning from street medicine teams as they worked to provide care is something that she will take with her in her future career.

“I think this was the best experience I ever could have got,” Vargas said. “I don’t even think I fully grasped how much experience I’ve gotten and how much I’ve learned and how much this will really affect me, but I believe it will help me as a provider one day.”

During the experience students also toured Union Station Homeless Services individual living and family housing, completed Narcan training and provided care packages, tents and clothing at The People Concern, one of Los Angles’s largest social service agencies, and other locations in Pasadena, Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Venice Beach, along with other activities.

It was during a clothing distribution that Isley Wilson, a third-year student studying biobehavioral health, helped a man prepare for an upcoming job interview.

“This was actually my favorite part of the day,” Wilson said. “We helped him get dress shirts and then he came back around and asked for my opinion about which color he should wear. I am really excited, and I am wishing him well. I hope he gets the job. I feel really good about it."

In total, the students distributed care packages that included more than 500 shirts, 250 pairs of socks, 100 pairs of underwear, 16 tents and sleeping bags, 300 toothbrushes and 50 tubes of toothpaste, along with other hygiene products, food and 750 packets of water enhancers. 

The students’ efforts were supported by alumna Nikki Jones and her husband, Unified Commerce Group chief executive officer Dustin Jones, whose company provided more than 1,800 clothing items, alumna Abi Smith of Forward Motion Physical Therapy, Chris Burns, CEO of InternU, and other community members and alumni who donated to the initiative.

Now in its third year, the course continues to provide students the kind of experience that Gravish Hurtack hoped for, she said, with plans to include a fall offering of the course in upcoming semesters.

“I hope our students gain an honest representation of how serving our neighbors from across the globe is a true act of solidarity. It is that fuel that will stay with each of them for a lifetime,” Gravish Hurtack said. “We are all two steps away from being unhoused. We lose our jobs and our support system, and we too can fall with this downward spiral. It is easier than you think.” 

Learn more about the Street Medicine Initiative here.