CoMo Mobile Aid is a local grassroots organization that sets up outside the local overnight shelter, Room the Inn [RATI], twice a week – offering a pop-up thrift store, a wound care station and a large, converted van where folks can get all sorts of essentials: from band aids and Tylenol to menstrual pads and shampoo.
It was here we met fourth year medical student, Mikala. She's been volunteering with CoMo Mobile Aid for several years and spoke about what the work has taught her about medicine and care.
For the month of June, we're focusing on the health of Columbia's unhoused community – specifically those who stay at the local overnight shelter, Room at the Inn.
Mikala: I really was looking for something that was more, like, grassroots, kind of, like, direct aid, and so honestly, this exposure and ability to do this – it’s just been really awesome, and now I'm doing family medicine.
And so, I'm really wanting to do, like, street medicine and work with people who are unhoused, and be able to go directly into camps and stuff like that.
And just, like, work with them directly as a physician because there's really – like I said – there's no infrastructure. This is the only [option] – this, and like, you know, RATI.
It's also just, like, a lot of barriers to the healthcare system in general. It's really hard to, like, get a primary care doctor, if you have no insurance and have no access and no transportation, you know?
And it's just – there's a lot of barriers to, like, walk into a clinic, and, like, I did a lot of work with MedZou but even that, I was like, “Oh, why don't people just go to MedZou?”
And then people are like, “Yeah…” They don't feel welcome, and they don't feel comfortable, and it's also hard to get there, and it's, like, all these things. I was just like, “Wow, all these things that I totally didn't know.”
So yeah, I just love how COMAC has been – it's, like, so low barrier. It's just meeting people where they're at that's really what I've. like, taken away from a lot of this.
I think just honestly – like I said – [I’m] taking away from it, the meeting people where they're at kind of mentality, like, that's something that I feel like I learned from a lot of the people who are starting and running this.
Like I said – Gayle, Cat, everybody else that I've really taken with me – like, I've literally talked about this in an interview, like, in a med school or residency interview.
But I was just like, I feel like I really applied that to both my future patient population, and also just me as a person, you know?
People don't have to show up as, like, the perfect, you know, person to receive help or care from their community, and so really, just that mindset and, like, seeing it modeled through everybody has just been the most rewarding and fulfilling thing.
And just seeing, again, meeting people where you're at, like, what that means to make friends with people and, like, just accept people for how they show up, and, you know, that's given me a lot to reflect upon – both in my professional career and my personal life.
