Community Care in Reach®

Community Care in Reach® is an innovative mobile health initiative that brings together partners in preventive care, addiction services, and harm reduction to serve individuals not well-connected to health care, experiencing homelessness and/or living with addiction. CareZONE is a Boston-based van operating under the Community Care in Reach® initiative. The van currently provides services at four sites across three Boston neighborhoods with high numbers of fatal opioid overdoses: Downtown, Fenway, and Roxbury.

Using an innovative partnership model, Community Care in Reach® combats the opioid epidemic with accessible, on-demand care. On the CareZONE van, experienced staff from Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and the Boston Public Health Commission’s AHOPE program provide a range of services on the van and connect patients to community health centers, treatment programs, or specialty care.

  • Addiction Services: Medications for addiction treatment and referrals to opioid treatment programs & in-patient detox
  • Harm Reduction: Naloxone, overdose prevention education, risk reduction counseling, and syringe exchange
  • Preventive Care: Screenings, immunizations, chronic disease management (including hypertension, diabetes, HIV treatment), and referrals to behavioral health, hepatitis C treatment, specialty medical care, and other services based on patient needs and preferences.

For this innovative program, The Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital is partnering with the GE Foundation, Ford Motor Company, the Hearst Foundation, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, and AHOPE, a program of the Boston Public Health Commission.

To learn more about the Boston-based program, CareZONE, please watch the video below.

For more information on Community Care in Reach®, please visit our Contact Us page.

The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Institute for Research, Quality & Policy in Homeless Health Care completed an evaluation of the 10-month pilot program in Boston. To read their full report, click here.

Youth & Young Adult Pilot Program

Based on the early success of the Community Care in Reach® initiative, The Kraft Center is partnering with the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine at Boston Medical Center, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, and Bridge Over Troubled Waters to bring mobile addiction services to youth and young adults (YYA) who access addiction services at much lower rates than older populations despite ongoing need. Leveraging the strengths and experiences of each partner agency, this pilot program provides two weekly evening sessions of mobile addiction services sessions for YYA in Downtown Boston. This year-long pilot will conclude in fall of 2020, during which time there will be a robust evaluation to help guide future directions of the project.

Mobile Addiction Services Toolkit

The Kraft Center has developed a Mobile Addiction Services Toolkit which provides a comprehensive overview of how to launch an operate a mobile addiction program following our Community Care in Reach® model. Included are sample protocols, best practices, and lessons learned over the course of our experiences with our own mobile health program.  To access the toolkit, please click here.