Writers-in-Training Intern and Contributing Writer
Geisinger College of Health Sciences
Kaitlin is a medical student at Geisinger College of Health Sciences, class of 2027, interested in primary care and addiction medicine. She is from Malvern, PA and attended Northeastern University for undergrad. Outside of school, Kaitlin loves running, volunteering, cooking, reading/writing, and playing piano!
We lug our oversized backpacks into the van and climb in, slamming the doors with such haste that the chaos mere feet away is smothered instantly. What had just been a moment of mayhem dissolves into one of pure silence. Ben doesn’t start the car. I don’t need to ask him why. This group has never been short on chatter, but for once the outreach team is resigned to stillness.
The idea of prescribing housing sounds too good to be true, the exact kind of thing you would expect to see on a medical drama. It couldn’t possibly work in real life … or could it?
I have learned that patients seek health care services at free clinics for a myriad of reasons and some are atypical. There were specific populations I expected to see: the uninsured, underinsured, undocumented, and those without access to transportation. Yet there were other populations I was more surprised to see, namely patients who had insurance but preferred their experiences at free clinics.
Seeking to document the experiences of students in street medicine groups at medical schools across the country, I decided to start with my own institution, the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine.
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine
Emma is an incoming first-year resident at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois in the Department of Otolaryngology. Her research interests include advancement of vestibular function testing, particularly in the pediatric population, as well as optimizing and improving medical education. She graduated from Northwestern University in 2015 with a bachelor of arts in biology and a minor in religious studies.
