BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Law enforcement and medical care providers split a $10.5 million dollar grant through their participation in the Fentanyl Misuse and Overdose Prevention Task Force.
- Video shows streeet medicine team, caring for unhoused people in the community along the Kern River
- On Tuesday, the Kern County Board of Supervisors approved a $1,000,000 grant to Clinica Sierra Vista through the Fentanyl Misuse and Overdose Prevention Taskforce, started by Assemblywoman Dr. Jasmeet Baines to prevent more overdoses from happening in Kern County.
The Kern River is just one of the stops the Clinica Sierra Vista street medicine team makes to serve the homeless population, and now additional state funding will support their work and expand services.
On the banks of the Kern River, you'll find Dr. Matthew Beare, searching.
“Good morning, Matthew. You down there?" Beare asked.
Just after the crack of dawn, Beare with the Clinica Sierra Vista street medicine team keeps an eye out for unhoused people in need of hygiene kits or medical treatment.
“How you been?” he asked one of the patients.
Each person Beare meets needs something different.
“Besides the hygiene and all that stuff. Is there anything else that you need?" Beare asked.
He works with his team to pack hygiene kits, lunches, and prescribe medications as needed.
“Yea, no that’s what I’m saying," he told one of their frequent patients. "If you didn’t have your meds it would be so much worse.”
But sometimes, Beare says they return to find their patients aren’t there anymore.
“We have more people than we’d like lost to overdose, and sometimes we show up and find out one of our patients is no longer here because you know they’ve succumbed to an overdose,” Beare said as he packed a hygiene kit.
That’s become increasingly more common as the Kern County Coroner’s Office reports a steady rise in fentanyl-related overdose deaths.
“We have a really close relationship with these patients so it really is like losing a friend,” he added.
So Beare says they try to keep their patients prepared.
“Do you guys have Narcan?” he asked a group of people while talking about an overdose.
On Tuesday, the Kern County Board of Supervisors approved a $1,000,000 grant to Clinica Sierra Vista through the Fentanyl Misuse and Overdose Prevention Taskforce, started by Assemblywoman Dr. Jasmeet Baines to prevent more overdoses from happening in Kern County.
“There’s nothing funny about the fact that people are dying from fentanyl daily,” Baines said in the board of supervisors meeting.
The state granted $10.5 million to the task force which Baines says she split in half to distribute to local law enforcement and medical care providers.
“You have people on one side and the other side, saying all we gotta do is lock everyone up. We gotta increase treatment. It’s both,” she said.
Beare says the funding will support their current street medicine efforts, and build their addition medicine fellowship program to support fellows like Milagros Becerra.
“There’s a huge need here in Bakersfield,” Becerra said.
According to the National Institutes of Health, less than 2,500 physicians in the nation specialize in addiction medicine.
Beare says the growth of the program will provide more access to those specialists in the field.
“We you start looking into what’s going on. You provide them help, and they can start turning their life around," Becerra said. "They can get their life back, and that to me is amazing that you can give life back to somebody.”
As the street medicine team heads to their next stop to continuing serving the unhoused in Bakersfield, the team says the expansion of resources and services through the grant money will help combat the fentanyl overdose crisis in Kern County.
Clinica Sierra Vista wasn't the only organization to receive funding.
- Arvin City Police Department received $700,000
- Shafter City Police Department was awarded $700,000
- Wasco City Police Department received $250,000
- Kern County Hospital Authority secured $1,000,000
- Memorandum of Understanding with the Kern County Office of the District Attorney in the amount of $660,000
You can watch the full presentation from county staff and Assemblywoman Dr. Jasmeet Bains here.
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