W. Oscar Fleming, DrPH, MSPH — a member of the National Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Workforce Development Center team — is featured in an Innovate Carolina article highlighting a collaborative effort to redesign street medicine for rural communities in Burke County, North Carolina. The project focuses on adapting street medicine models, which are more commonly implemented in urban settings, to work effectively in rural contexts where workforce capacity, geography, and sustainability pose unique challenges.
The project’s recent initiatives include delivering patient care via a mobile bus and “backpack medicine.”
“The mobile bus pilot is an excellent example of what’s possible when you listen first, co-create with the community, and then team with partners to prototype and test using what you’ve learned. We’re incredibly proud of the Burke County team for turning lessons learned from residents into more effective street medicine practices that are poised to create healthier outcomes for all people in the community.”
— Bill Romani, PhD, director of Innovate Carolina’s Design and Innovation for the Public Good (DIPG) team.
Fleming is an assistant professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and an expert in evidence-based decision making, applied implementation, and family and community engagement. Within the MCH Workforce Center, he leads our efforts to help Title V teams explore and understand MCH evidence, identify what works, and use implementation processes to help ensure that MCH interventions can produce their intended outcomes and improve health.