2019 News

By Sean Scheiner, Data Coordinator Attending this year’s International Street Medicine Symposium (ISMS) in Pittsburgh was a great experience. I got to know so many inspiring people from across the country that are involved in Street Medicine, and learn some useful, collaborative ideas to bring back to our Santa Barbara community. The most substantial workshop [...]

By Chris Orozco If you have volunteered with Doctors Without Walls for any length of time, then there is only a small chance that you are unfamiliar with the friendly smile and warm welcome of our wonderful triage volunteer Lynn Matis. Lynn initially moved to Santa Barbara to finish her graduate degree in psychology and [...]

By Jeanelle Posch, DWW Operations Director The 15th annual International Street Medicine Symposium was recently held October 20-23, 2019 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  Nearly 500 clinician, services providers, educators, researchers and students from 70 cities in 15 countries were in attendance.  I had the honor of attending as a representative for Doctors Without Walls to learn [...]

By Jamila Campwala In 2018, Doctors Without Walls began partnering with a local non-profit organization, Healing Opportunities. The organization has been dedicated to not only assisting non-profits, like DWW, but also to helping first responders, healthcare providers, and community members through the use of acupuncture.  The acupuncture program has been implemented at DWW’s Women’s Free [...]

By Emily Paz Lompoc is home to the highest poverty rate in Santa Barbara County at 20.8%. The homeless population has created a community in the Santa Ynez riverbed which runs through Lompoc and quickly became an unsafe environment due to its lack of patrol and a high concentration of at risk homeless persons living [...]

By Katrina Guzzardi, Communications Coordinator Doctors Without Walls - Santa Barbara Street Medicine is excited to announce our partnership with Unite to Light for this year’s “Santa Barbara Gives!” happening now through December 31st. As our long-time supporters know, DWW is dedicated to providing free medical care to the homeless residents of Santa Barbara County, [...]

The 12th Annual Underserved Medicine Seminar took place during the Winter 2019 quarter at UCSB. Over the course of 10 weeks, the 250 students who were enrolled in the class took a deep dive into the vast world of humanitarian medicine. With topics ranging from neglected tropical diseases to the opioid crisis, students were inspired [...]

By Margaux Everingham Nature calls and you have nowhere to go? That can lead to a messy situation both figuratively and literally. Among the myriad of problems faced by the underserved in our community, a clean and safe place to use the restroom is one of both the most pervasive and the most often neglected [...]

By: Lorena Brasnic Every second and fourth Saturday of the month, the DWW-SBSM van parks outside of the Trinity Church of Nazarene in Lompoc and enthusiastic volunteers led by the passionate leadership of the clinic coordinator Cassie, set up a clinic in the communal room of the church. According to the clinic’s vitalist Bobby, patients’ [...]

By Abby Lau Jeanelle Posch joined the DWW-SBSM (Doctors Without Walls-Santa Barbara Street Medicine) team in January as our new Operations Director. Jeanelle was raised in Southern California. She and her husband, Chris, have two daughters, Ashley and Sydney. She has a B.S. in Biological Sciences from UC Santa Barbara and a Clinical Trials Design/Management [...]