On a cold morning in Kansas City, Missouri's Historic Northeast neighborhood, a massive recreational vehicle equipped with medical machinery, supplies, and separate booths for patient care sits next to the Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus at 7th and Virginia Avenue.
Inside the mobile medical unit, sponsored by Swope Health Services, nurses treat unhoused people's varied needs. Keith Hardin, a 67-year-old in a black hoodie and camouflage-style overalls, said he’s been without a home since November 2023. He’s had issues with high blood pressure. He said he was having bad chest pains.
“I have acid reflux, and for the last few days, the acid reflux has really been bothering me,” he said. “It’s feeling like I’ve been having a heart attack.”
Hardin said he’s been to multiple medical institutions. Nothing has relieved his pain. He decided to return to the Mobile Medical Unit when the pain got worse in recent days. He takes his health seriously, but said many of the unhoused residents he meets do not.
“There's a lot of people that come around here that are really neglecting their health,” Hardin said.
Hardin said he has seen three unhoused people die. It terrifies him. One died after describing the same pain Hardin is feeling himself.
“One just had a heart attack and died, right down the street there," said Hardin. “But what can you do about people that don’t wanna do the right thing?”
Serving the community
Swope Health Center isn’t the only organization that sponsors mobile health units. Care Beyond the Boulevard does the same. But Hardin says there’s one reason he returns here: Nurse Practitioner Rachel Melson.
Melson, 36, has been directing Swope Health Center’s Outreach Clinic for 10 years.
The organization was founded in 1987 to provide better health care services to the unhoused community. It's a part of the National Healthcare for Homeless Council and was one of the first programs in the state to offer a wide range of medical services. Access is free once patients are enrolled and includes basic physicals and follow-ups, vaccinations, and access to medicines.
Melson said the Mobile Medical Unit helps them reach people who aren’t able or choose not to come to their brick-and-mortar clinic at 3801 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
“We go directly to transitional living facilities, halfway houses, shelters and recovery spaces,” Melson said.
The need is growing.
“Over 2,600 (patients) were seen by medical providers in our mobile outreach clinic (in 2025),” Melson reported.
That's more than half as many in one year as they saw in all of the last five years combined.
Melson attributes their success to their approach to treating homeless patients. She gets to know her patients as people first. She has non-medical conversations with them, learns about their lives and eats lunch at the same table they do. Too often, she said, health care providers don’t recognize why it’s so difficult for unhoused individuals to come see a doctor.
“They feel like they're coming in and people are looking at them because they are being perceived as loitering,” Melson said, “or they haven't been able to shower in a week. They are embarrassed to be around other people.”
Melson said patients respond to health care providers and take better care of themselves when they have a restored sense of dignity. They’re more prone to come in for check-ups, take their medicine and come back for follow-ups. She finds they're more willing to commit to living a healthier life.
A vulnerable population
People experiencing homelessness have higher rates of chronic and infectious diseases for a variety of reasons. Germs spread easily in the wide-open sleeping environments or shelters. Being outside, they’re more susceptible to illnesses and infection. They wait until their problems are advanced due to shame, a lack of information or poor access to health care providers.
Tuberculosis and COVID-19 are among the common diseases that disproportionately afflict unhoused individuals, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to pre-COVID 2019 data from the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, 20% of unhoused residents are diagnosed with HIV, 36% with Hepatitis C and 50% with hypertension.
Josh Henges, Chief Impact Officer for Unhoused Solutions for Kansas City, Missouri, said illness spreads quickly through the unhoused population.
“In terms of nagging sicknesses, that's constant,” he said. “But that's not an option for folks. They still have to survive despite running a fever or having the flu or having COVID-19."
Recognition for her work
At a ceremony at the end of 2025, Melson was selected from hundreds of nominations as the inaugural recipient of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation's Uncommon Leader Award.
Dr. DeAngela Burns-Wallace, president and CEO of the foundation, said the new award was designed to recognize people whose work often goes unseen, but whose commitment to equity and innovation provides solutions to some of our communities’ most vexing challenges. The leaders, according to the foundation, “embody the spirit of Ewing Kauffman’s uncommon leadership through their innovation, courage, and impact in their communities.”
As she walked up to the stage to accept her award, Melson was emotional. Breaking out in tears mid-speech, she said the need for more outreach, more access, and more humanity continues to grow.
“People heal, they reconnect with family, they stabilize in recovery," she said through her tears. "They begin to imagine a future that they once told or believed wasn’t possible. That is equity…that is mobility.”
