It's supposed to bring medical care to the homeless. Why isn't it operational?
Nearly six months after being announced, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department's program to provide health care to those living unhoused in the region is still not up and running.
Some people are worried and wonder if the program will ever become what was promised.
In October 2024, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department (TPCHD) and the City of Tacoma announced the Street Medicine Pilot Program — funded by a $1 million grant from the Washington State Health Care Authority.
According to an Oct. 22 news release announcing the program, the street medicine teams would be composed of medical and behavioral health professionals, including a medical provider, a behavioral health professional and a community health worker.
'This program will bring crucial healthcare services directly to people living unsheltered,' the release stated. 'The program will deploy specially trained Street Medicine Teams to provide care to individuals living in encampments, tent cities, vehicles, and other unsheltered locations.'
During a Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness meeting on May 2, a representative from the department gave an update on the program.
Bianca Shell, program manager for the street medicine program, said the department is working on hiring staff for the team. She was hired in March.
Shell reported the program had hired two peer-support specialists, a homelessness liaison and a nurse with a behavioral health background. She said the department is in negotiations with a medical doctor and a nurse practitioner.
Shell said the program likely would not be fully staffed until September 2025.
She attributed the delay to an overall shortage in healthcare specialists following the pandemic and said the organization of Pierce County's street medicine team is different than in other places with similar programs.
Shell said in other places teams are organized and operated directly by healthcare providers, such as hospitals or clinics. Pierce County's is being facilitated by the health department, which typically does not administer health care.
'I don't know the exact reasons as to why not, but that puts us at a disadvantage. Because you have a health department who is trying to stand up this team when the health department historically has not done this kind of work,' Shell told members of the coalition. 'So that also accounts for some of the delay.'
By late June, Shell said she anticipates being able to deploy large vans in the community to distribute supplies and offer medical exams in some capacity. She said the program will have to form partnerships to be able to host the vans in parking lots and other areas with encampments.
To date, the program has distributed hygiene kits and opioid overdose-reversing medicine around the community. She estimated the program has helped distribute supplies to more than 500 people.
Sally Perkins is a local homeless advocate who does volunteer street outreach in Tacoma's Hilltop Neighborhood. During the May 2 meeting, Perkins expressed some of her frustrations with the rollout of the program.
'This is the first truthful presentation we have had on street medicine yet,' Perkins said following Shell's presentation. 'We've been gaslighted for months.'
Perkins said the timeline and progress of the program has been 'obfuscated' by both the City of Tacoma and TPCHD.
'Fast forward to May 2025. Still not up and running,' Perkins wrote to The News Tribune in an email. 'Handing out supplies is something that random volunteers like ME can do … for free.'
Perkins told The News Tribune she is concerned the street medicine team would not be what was promised — a program that brings health care 'directly' to those who need it.
She said she did not like the plan to park a street medicine van in one location and require those living unhoused to find it, which she said could be difficult for sick and mobility-impared individuals.
During the 2024 survey of those living unhoused in Pierce County, volunteers counted 2,661 people living unhoused in a single night. Of those surveyed, 25% reported having a chronic health condition, and 22% reported having a physical disability.
'This is not true street medicine and was not the intent of the original Legislative proviso, as I understand that proviso,' Perkins wrote to The News Tribune. 'And as far as I can see, there is no way for me, who is out talking to unsheltered people fairly regularly, to call this team directly and get them to show up when they are needed.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
a day ago
- CBS News
Fire at Shell cracker plant in Beaver County forces evacuation of multiple employees
A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said a fire at the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County forced the evacuation of multiple employees and potentially released chemicals into the community. Anita White and Eli Matich worry about what could be in the air outside their home in Potter Township, just miles away from the plant. "It just feels scary, because you don't really know how it's impacting your health," White said. "When they built it, it was meant for job employment, help boost Beaver County. But instead, it's kind of been more negative than positive, it seems like," Matich said. It was just two days ago when smoke appeared to be billowing out of the facility, caused by what the state DEP calls a fire. It happened Wednesday afternoon at ethane cracking furnace #5. The DEP spokesperson said Shell reported that 15 employees were evacuated, and one person suffered a minor heat-related injury. KDKA obtained a photo showing a mangled furnace inside the complex. A Shell employee told KDKA that the damage is so bad it could result in them tearing it down and rebuilding. "It's definitely concerning," Matich said. The DEP spokesperson said it resulted in the "possible release of an unknown amount of 1,3-butadiene and benzene" in the air, and that the furnace "was not in production at the time." The agency added that an emergency response team member conducted an initial assessment at the plant and did not see any visible emissions or unintended releases of them due to a malfunction or other problem, along with any unpleasant smells. Also, their "air monitor did not register any emissions above zero, which means there weren't any air pollutants that lingered related [to] the fire." "We're always trying to eat healthy and be clean, but then we have these chemicals that are going into the air. So, it kind of feels like, all right, what's the point?" White said. Environmental experts describe what may have been released this week as cancer-causing chemicals. Since Shell started operating here in late 2022, it's faced several malfunctions and millions of dollars in fines. Shell did not disclose the potential release of chemicals in a Facebook post to the public, but a spokesperson told KDKA they informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and "will submit the [investigation] findings, as required, to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) and the Local Emergency Planning Commission (LEPC)." As for White and Matich, for the time being, they'll be staying where they are. "Until the housing market gets a bit better, so we can move a little farther away," White said. The DEP spokesperson said Shell is continuing to investigate and that the agency will ensure the company complies with environmental regulations for the health and safety of the community.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘Tough and tender.' Longtime advocate for Pierce County homicide victims dies
Lew Cox, a longtime advocate for victims of violent crime who was a fixture in the courthouse in Pierce County, was recently involved in a car crash and died at 85. Cox was well known by prosecutors, law enforcement and the scores of families he helped to process grief and understand the inner workings of the judicial system, turning his own personal tragedy into a mission to assist others to heal. His 22-year-old daughter, Carmon, was murdered in Los Angeles in 1987 while Cox was in the Philippines performing work through a ministry he started, according to his wife, Suzanne, and an online letter Cox authored in 2008. Cox founded Tacoma-based Violent Crime Victims Services four years after his daughter was killed, giving families and friends of homicide victims a reputable advocate in someone intimately familiar with the experience of losing a loved one. He worked with over 1,000 families, including in high-profile cases such as the Green River killings, Suzanne Cox said in an interview. The organization, which she said essentially folded about two years ago after her husband left in 2021, offered crisis intervention, peer counseling, support groups and court guidance. While Lew Cox was dedicated to Pierce County, he helped families elsewhere, including outside the United States, according to his wife. 'I don't think anybody knows more about grief counseling than Lew,' Scott Bramhall, who became a client in 1992 after his wife's brother was murdered in Tacoma, said in an interview. Lew Cox died May 14, involved in a two-vehicle crash in the 7900 block of Valley Avenue Northwest near the Fife-Puyallup border. Suzanne Cox and Bramhall said Tuesday that all details were not yet known but that he may have suffered some type of medical event prior to the wreck and they were awaiting clarity from the Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office. The driver of the other vehicle was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said. Lew Cox, a graduate of Stadium High School, was frequently found in the pages of The News Tribune. Violent Crime Victim Services was credited in 1997 with helping a mother who became a political activist after her 21-year-old son was slain. Cox provided his perspective on the relief that families felt being able to address 'Green River Killer' Gary Ridgway during Ridgway's sentencing hearing in 2003. He advocated for justice in 2004 as then-Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald Horne weighed whether to charge the Washington D.C.-area snipers with the 2002 slaying of a 21-year-old woman. In other instances, he acted as a family spokesperson to the press, defended a prosecutor's rationale for not seeking the death penalty for the murder of an armored guard, reflected on a week spent in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and described the difficulty of enduring in the aftermath of heartbreak. 'Am I over this? No. You never get over it. There's a piece of your heart that's been ripped out,' he told a News Tribune reporter in 2004. 'I loved my daughter very much; losing her was the worst pain a father can experience. But I also knew I had to resume life.' Bramhall, a retired Puyallup police detective, said that Cox — who also served for roughly 25 years as a chaplain for the Des Moines Police Department — was an asset to prosecutors and law enforcement as a liaison between officials and crime victims' families. 'If you went to the courthouse, you would oftentimes find him there,' Bramhall said. Pierce County deputy prosecutor Lisa Wagner recalled Cox as omnipresent in courthouse hallways and 'really, such a huge help' because he had the ability to keep close relationships with victims' families even after they had left the courthouse — ties that prosecutors and Pierce County's victim advocates don't ordinarily maintain. Wagner, who met Cox three decades ago through her work, said he had a keen understanding of the legal system and willingly re-lived his own trauma for the sake of providing 'incalculable' aid to others. Cox was genuinely kind and caring, Wagner said in an interview. 'You don't often run into people like that in my business,' she said. Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett first crossed paths with Cox in the mid-1990s, and he was well known to the attorneys and advocates in the Prosecutor's Office, she told The News Tribune. He had the air of a religious leader and was soft-spoken, warm and approachable, according to Robnett, who said it was comforting to have him around. Her office would pick up his phone calls or set aside time to meet with him, and he often showed up to court hearings with family members of victims, she said. Robnett said she remembers Cox sitting in court, attending community events and appearing at law enforcement funerals. Ultimately, he wanted to be a resource for victims' families. 'He did that and he did that really well,' she said. Suzanne Cox described her husband as 'a tough and tender kind of guy' who wasn't known to dwell. He had experienced more than one tragedy in his life. Shortly after the murder of his daughter — born from a previous marriage — his wife died, too, she said. He later lost a son. 'I just always was kind of amazed by his resiliency,' she said. Suzanne and Lew Cox married in 1991. He was a published author, co-writing a book titled, 'Coping with Traumatic Death: Homicide,' that sought to shepherd grieving families through loss. He also served on a Washington state task force related to criminal sentencing as a strong proponent of not lowering punishment, testified in front of state lawmakers and took the stand in a civil court case, Suzanne Cox said. He trained therapists and chaplains, and worked as a consultant after leaving Violent Crime Victim Services. 'He cared for people. He cared for everybody that he worked with,' she said. 'He just had a real heart for victims and he had a heart to see that things would be better for them in terms of the laws.' Lew Cox also enjoyed outside interests, namely trains, planes and automobiles, and he was a commercially rated pilot, according to his wife and Bramhall. He was an avid tennis player and church-goer who liked to dress up in suits. He also wasn't afraid to speak his mind, including when his wife cooked too much pasta or neighborhood kids were too loud. In his youth, Lew Cox was an altar boy and later worked in a shoe store, drove trucks hauling gasoline, sugar or honey, and opened a health food shop in Federal Way that was eventually bought and turned into Marlene's Market & Deli, according to Suzanne Cox. In the last year of his life, Lew Cox had suffered some health issues but none that were debilitating, his wife said. The day before he died, the couple had learned that he had a mass on his bladder but it wasn't known if it was cancerous. He died on his wife's birthday, just four days before their 34th wedding anniversary. 'Lew was very dedicated,' Bramhall said. 'He would sink his teeth into a project and not let go. 'And his teeth were sunk into caring for the people who were facing a grief that no one else could help them with.' Lew Cox is survived by his wife, two daughters, two granddaughters and one great-grandson. His family is planning on holding a funeral service in August in Federal Way, where he and his wife lived.
30-05-2025
Wrongful death lawsuit says Big Oil contributed to heat wave and woman's death
In one of the nation's first wrongful-death claims seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the changing climate, a Washington state woman is suing seven oil and gas companies, saying they contributed to an extraordinarily hot day that led to her mother's fatal hyperthermia. The lawsuit filed in state court this week says the companies knew that their products have altered the climate, including contributing to a 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that killed 65-year-old Juliana Leon, and that they failed to warn the public of such risks. On June 28, 2021, an unusual heat wave culminated in a 108-degrees Fahrenheit (42.22 degrees Celsius) day — the hottest ever recorded in the state, according to the filing. Leon had just driven 100 miles from home for an appointment, and she rolled down her windows on the way back because her car's air conditioning wasn't working. Leon pulled over and parked her car in a residential area, according to the lawsuit. She was found unconscious behind the wheel when a bystander called for help. Despite medical interventions, Leon died. The filing names Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and BP subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company. 'Defendants knew that their fossil fuel products were already altering the earth's atmosphere,' when Juliana was born, Thursday's filing said. 'By 1968, Defendants understood that the fossil fuel-dependent economy they were creating and perpetuating would intensify those atmospheric changes, resulting in more frequent and destructive weather disasters and foreseeable loss of human life.' The filing adds: 'The extreme heat that killed Julie was directly linked to fossil fuel-driven alteration of the climate.' Chevron Corporation counsel Theodore Boutrous Jr. said in a statement: 'Exploiting a personal tragedy to promote politicized climate tort litigation is contrary to law, science, and common sense. The court should add this far-fetched claim to the growing list of meritless climate lawsuits that state and federal courts have already dismissed.' ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell and BP subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit accuses the companies of hiding, downplaying and misrepresenting the risks of climate change caused by humans burning oil and gas and obstructing research. International climate researchers said in a peer-reviewed analysis that the 2021 'heat dome' was 'virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.' Scientists have broadly attributed the record-breaking, more frequent, longer-lasting and increasingly deadly heat waves around the world to climate change that they say is a result of burning fossil fuels. Oil and gas are fossil fuels that, when burned, emit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide. 'We've seen a really advanced scientific understanding about the specific effects that climate change can cause in individual extreme weather events,' said Korey Silverman-Roati, a senior fellow at the Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. 'Scientists today are a lot more confident in saying that but for climate change, this would not have happened." Silverman-Roati said the specificity of the case could clarify for people the consequences of climate change and the potential consequences of company behavior. The lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times. 'Big Oil companies have known for decades that their products would cause catastrophic climate disasters that would become more deadly and destructive if they didn't change their business model,' said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement on the case. 'But instead of warning the public and taking steps to save lives, Big Oil lied and deliberately accelerated the problem.' States and cities have long gone after fossil fuel industry stakeholders for contributing to the planet's warming. Recently, Hawaii and Michigan announced plans for legal action against fossil fuel companies for harms caused by climate change, though the states have been met by counter lawsuits from the U.S. Justice Department. The Trump administration has been quick to disregard climate change and has moved against initiatives aimed at combating it. The U.S. withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — an agency whose weather forecasting and research workforce has been gutted — will no longer track the cost of weather disasters fueled by climate change. And the Environmental Protection Agency has been called on to a rewrite its long-standing findings that determined planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up support for oil and gas production in the name of an 'American energy dominance' agenda, and it rolled back a host of other efforts and projects to address climate change. Around the world, other climate cases are being watched closely as potentially setting unique precedent in the effort to hold major polluters accountable. A German court ruled this week against a Peruvian farmer who claimed an energy company's greenhouse gas emissions fueled global warming and put his home at risk. Still, a case that looks to argue these companies should be held liable for an individual's death is rare. Misti Leon is seeking unspecified monetary damages. 'Looking ahead, it's hard to imagine this will be an isolated incident,' said Don Braman, associate professor at George Washington University Law School. "We're facing an escalating climate crisis. It's a sobering thought that this year, the hottest on record, will almost certainly be one of the coolest we'll experience for the foreseeable future. 'It is predictable or — to use a legal term, foreseeable — that the loss of life from these climate-fueled disasters will likely accelerate as climate chaos intensifies,' he added. 'At the heart of all this is the argument about the culpability of fossil fuel companies, and it rests on a large and growing body of evidence that these companies have understood the dangers of their products for decades.' ___ @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ___ ___
