Miami Street Medicine Provides Healthcare That Meets People Where They Are
Miami Street Medicine is a nonprofit organization committed to providing free healthcare services for people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and limited access to medical care in Miami-Dade County.
Our work is built around a simple belief: healthcare should not depend on insurance status, housing status, income, documentation, or the ability to navigate a complicated system.
Through street medicine outreach, free clinical care, crisis support, and community-based partnerships, Miami Street Medicine helps bring care directly to people who are too often left without safe, consistent medical support.
Care Without Insurance, ID, or Judgment
We believe everyone deserves access to care, regardless of income, housing status, insurance status, documentation, or ability to pay.
.png)
How Miami Street Medicine Began
Miami Street Medicine began with a leg that never should have been lost. As an early undergraduate doing charity outreach with people experiencing homelessness, Dan Bergholz met a patient with a diabetic foot wound that had gone untreated for too long, not from any failure of medicine, but because there was no way for her to reach care in time. The wound cost the patient her leg, and the case stayed with him. Handing out supplies and pointing people toward help was not enough if the help itself was never actually reachable. The work mattered, but it was not moving the needle.
Around that time he discovered street medicine, a growing national movement built on one principle: if patients cannot reach the clinic, the clinic comes to them. Accepted to the University of Miami's medical school, he moved to the city early and began walking the streets and talking with the people living on them. He learned there were very limited street outreach services for thousands of individuals sleeping rough, and he heard repeated personal narratives of folks not being able to access, navigate, and maintain their healthcare in the traditional care systems.
After some years of planning, development, and informal outreach, he sent his new classmates a message: would anyone be interested in formalizing this street medicine clinic together? The answer came back fast and in numbers. A coalition took shape with some students coordinating care, others organizing volunteers, others engaging in political advocacy work, some managing supplies, and each one carrying a piece of what would become Miami Street Medicine.
Just as the program found its footing, the pandemic forced it to adapt. Bergholz connected with Dr. Armen Henderson, a physician already running disaster relief work through Dade County Street Response. Henderson believed in Dan’s team, service model, and mission; he offered to be the physician champion it needed for longevity and legitimacy, while deepening its roots in the community and providing the medical oversight that would anchor its clinical care. He gave Dan better backpacks too, and the two formed a deep partnership that then expanded funding, educational programming, research, and the service network throughout Dade County Street Response. Today DCSR includes a free clinic called Doctors Within Borders, The Freedom House Mental Health Crisis Line, Food Pharmacy, Disaster Relief Team, and more.
What started as a person carrying a beaten backpack with bandaids now runs seven days a week with a professional service team and long term sustainability. Since 2021, the teams have completed more than 4,000 patient engagements, work that the Associated Press, Miami Herald, CBS, and an Emmy nominated Netflix documentary followed onto the streets of Miami.
The mission has not changed since those first weeks walking the streets. Everyone deserves care, living outside is not a reason to be denied it, and sometimes the most important thing a clinician can do is show up for the patient, both metaphorically and literally.
