Planet Detroit’s neighborhood reporters are local residents who cover health, environment and climate issues in their neighborhoods. The Lab is made possible with the generous support of the Kresge Foundation.
The cold spring air clung to the morning as a small street medicine team in an outreach van headed into Detroit’s West Side, stopping on Michigan Avenue. The team provides healthcare to unhoused Detroiters.
At the center of this work is Dr. Richard Bryce, a physician at Community Health and Social Services (CHASS) Clinic in Southwest Detroit. Dr. Bryce is also the faculty advisor and medical director of Street Medicine Detroit and Detroit Street Care, joined on this run by a CHASS community health worker and a group of first-year Michigan State University medical students.
Throughout the run, Dr. Bryce shifted seamlessly between roles. He guided students through wound care, arranged follow-up appointments, called in prescriptions, and greeted familiar faces with the ease of someone who had built lasting trust over time…