Clinic is held the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 12:30-3:30pm

Beginning May 8th, 2024 Clinic will be held in the UUCE parking lot 1:30-4:30pm

We set up our clinic using an array of pop-up tents, folding chairs and tables. One of our pop-up tents, “the purple people-helper” is our designated medical tent and can zip shut for patient privacy. Our clinic hosts an integrative team of medical care: precribers (MD, NP, PA), wound nurses, EMTs and clinical herbalists. People seeking care with us can decide how they would like to approach their medical care. Some people wish only to speak to an herbalist instead of an MD for example, and that’s ok. We assist people with anything ranging from basic blood pressure checks to abscess care. We see many return patients month after month, and while we are not a primary care clinic, for many people we are their only care.

Alongside our medical tent we have a “hospitality table” that provides hot coffee, community resources and zines, survival supplies such as socks, hand warmers, chapstick and wet wipes. This table sits alongside our harm reduction supplies table where we provide safe sex supplies, drug test strips, naloxone (Narcan), safer use kits along with other supplies.

We also have our Reproductive Health Tent which supports anyone with reproductive health needs. This includes but is not limited to abortion, miscarriage & prenatal/pregnancy support, STI testing and referrals.

Our monthly clinic provides stability and a place for ongoing care for folks on the street. People are displaced regularly by police and city workers making it difficult to track people down to provide ongoing care via outreach. Having a set place people know to find us each month ensures people get the ongoing care and connection to providers they need.

We provide weekly roving outreach services to encampment locations in the Eugene/Springfield area. Due to the extent of criminalization of homelessness in our community, people have been displaced to many hard-to-reach places. People tend to seek shelter out of sight from where the average general public go, and these places are usually inaccessible by car. Where the people are, we go. We walk down railroad tracks, alongside rivers and ditches, thru industrial waste fields and wetlands, and alongside sidewalks. The size of encampments vary anywhere from four people to twenty or more.

Our team packs up large supply bags and sometimes wagons along with our first aid kits in tow and go on foot to where people shelter. We offer direct medical care, survival and harm reduction supplies, water and resources. Because we have gained the trust of much of the community on the street, people mostly let us know where they are or when they need a medical visit or a “re-up” of supplies.

We travel in teams of two and three, usually with a wound nurse alongside an herbalist and at times a prescribing provider. If a medical provider cannot join us out in the field, we offer telemedicine visits to people and can call in or provide prescriptions and assess wounds and other ailments in real-time without a person having to leave their encampment.

By bringing medical care directly to a person, we are able to support people with ongoing and sometimes simple medical interventions, that in turn prevent the need for more serious care or a trip to the ER and more extensive hospital intervention later on.

Black Thistle Street Aid is rooted firmly in the ethic that there is no health justice without reproductive health justice for all. Our team provides full spectrum reproductive care in the field, including access and referrals for gender affirming care, abortion and perinatal care. Our Reproductive Harm Reduction Health Program (RHRH) provides wraparound supports, reproductive healthcare, advocacy, and hotel stays for anyone who is living outside and does not have a safe place to access their reproductive health needs. We help reduce harm within reproductive health experiences. Our team supports people with a wide range of reproductive health needs including pregnancy, abortion & miscarriage support, STI testing & treatment and education.

Each person or household admitted to the program receives:
- supports for food and household purchases
- harm reduction supplies & education
- basic hygiene items
- phone and laundry supports
- 1:1 peer support, systems navigation, medical advocacy, collaborative and long term case management planning
- access to prenatal care and provider consults
- supports for starting/maintaining essential medications

Our hotel stays are crucial to people’s overall wellbeing and stability.Read more about our hotel program and funding needs here.

Our Medicine Cabinet Program works to engage and empower those we support on the street with tools to take healthcare into their own hands and care peer to peer within individual encampments. Through working closely with people at various encampments over the years, we have identified people who tend to be the “camp parent”, hosting a safe place for people to drop in, get supplies and be fed and cared for. Our team provides this individual with a “Medicine Cabinent”, a comprehensive first aid kit along with some harm reduction supplies including naloxone (Narcan) and test strips, education on basic first aid, wound care and Narcan training if necessary.

By providing and making accessible ample first aid supplies to those in need who we may not see on outreach but whom frequent that encampment, the program prevents much more serious infections from occurring while also empowering people to care for each other. The Medicine Cabinet host reaches out to us when refills are needed, or if further non-emergent medical care is required.

It has been wonderful to see that hosts and folks in the encampments have begun adding their own supplies, and providing feedback and requests for encampment-specific needs for future re-fills. It is our goal to one day be able to compensate the hosts of the cabinets for their time and responsibility, and to provide more extensive training to these individuals.

In addition to our direct healthcare programs, we also create and distribute many public health zines (small booklets). Education is often the best mode of prevention, and as such we bring our zines to clinic and outreach, add them to our Medicine Cabinets, make many of them available publicly on our website, and share on social media. Zine topics have included: Know Your Rights (specific to being unhoused), Abscess Care, How to use Narcan, Community Herbalism, Surviving winter and summer on the streets and more.

We also publish our Word On The Street zine roughly once per quarter, which is more geared toward information and topics directly impacting those on the street. Topics vary from legal info, safer substance use, shelter/housing assistance, community alerts, resources and events etc. The Word On The Street gets direct feedback from individuals we work with and reflects topics most important or pressing to them. We also offer anyone we work with the opportunity to contribute to the publication. People have submitted art, poems and topic ideas.