On Tuesday, nursing students spent most of the morning at the Cherry Avenue Auction in Fresno County. This time, they brought new wheels with them.
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"The way our unit has been designed is actually designed by a nurse for nurses," explained Madelyn Carey, assistant professor of College of Health and Human Services. "The way it's designed inside -- it can either be one giant exam room, it can be sorted into two separate exam rooms that have tables for our nurse practitioner students, or in today's case, we have it set up to be three different little exam rooms."
Fresno State has two large, brand new mobile health units, where students and faculty can provide free health services and screenings to underserved communities.
Bea Hartung, a fifth-semester nursing student, said more space allows more patients to be served.
"There wasn't a whole lot of room to move around," she shared. "So we had to limit the amount of students and staff that could go out into these communities."
In underserved communities, healthcare access is limited.
According to Carey, the mobile unit has helped identify serious health conditions that patients would have never known about.
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"We help them take those first steps, even to the point of giving them a referral to different clinics in the community that can help with next steps like medication management," Carey said.
The new mobile health units were made possible by $4 million in state funds secured by Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula.
Since the original mobile health unit rolled out in 2015, nearly 18,000 patients have received health care services from Fresno State faculty and students.
There are four more mobile health units scheduled around Fresno County.
Visit here to find a list of dates and locations.
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