Gainesville is recognized internationally as a world-class healthcare destination, offering wonderful patient care, innovative research, and the leading-edge educational programs training our next generation of providers. While I don’t think this is news to any of us, the devil is in the details and sometimes we miss the true breadth of options available to us. Case in point: UF Health’s Mobile Outreach Unit fleet, devoted to bringing high-quality healthcare to the places where people work and live.

This month, UF Health launched its latest mobile unit, this one focused on gynecologic and maternal care. The Mobile OB/GYN Outreach Unit is a collaboration between the UF Mobile Outreach Clinic and UF College of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The van itself features two exam rooms, a waiting area, lab space, and a wheelchair lift to deliver compassionate, high-quality care to everyone, regardless of insurance status or ability to pay. Healthcare providers staffing the mobile unit also provide breastfeeding and family planning support to help empower individuals to make informed decisions about reproductive health.

The new Mobile OB/GYN Outreach Unit is just the latest in UF’s efforts to expand its reach. The original Mobile Outreach Clinic (MOC) has worked to meet the needs of the medically underserved in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas since 2010, delivering free, high-quality medical care and service coordination. By operating a retrofitted bus that brings healthcare directly into neighborhoods, MOC eliminates traditional barriers to care, such as transportation and distance to medical facilities.

An additional service of the MOC is the UF medical-student-run Street Medicine program for our particularly vulnerable unhoused population. The med students go out in teams with a licensed medical provider, residents, and student volunteers to bring healthcare to where these patients are residing, whether in an encampment, under a bridge, or in the woods, to help combat issues like food scarcity, trauma, violence, access to transportation, mental health, and substance abuse. And not to frighten you, but did you know that, according to the National Institutes of Health, 1.9 million brain cells are lost every minute during a stroke, and they cannot be recovered? To help combat this, in the summer of 2023, UF Health launched the Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit (MSTU), one of only 16 active programs of its kind nationwide. In collaboration with Alachua County Fire Rescue, the MSTU can come straight to your driveway, carrying a stroke-trained registered nurse, a paramedic, an emergency medical technician, and a CT technologist, as well as a vascular neurologist either on the truck or through telemedicine, to begin actual treatment while on the way to the nearest stroke center.

I feel incredibly blessed that our community’s medical professionals continue to innovate and expand their services, helping to ensure we can lead healthy, productive lives.

Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of business columns sponsored by Pavlov Media.