Dr. Seth Ammerman listens intently to his new, 21-year-old patient. Ernesto, who does not want his last name disclosed, is homeless. He is earning a high school degree and working part time, but at night, he and his brother share a tent that they set up on the streets of San Jose, Calif. The daily stress of being homeless is wearing Ernesto out, and making him light up too many cigarettes.
"I just want to cut down on my smoking," says Ernesto, in a tentative, soft voice. "I've been on the streets all the time, you know? I just want to make sure I'm OK."
That's why Ernesto walked into this mobile clinic, parked just a few steps from his classroom at a continuation high school. Inside the shiny blue tour bus, the exam room where Ernesto sits is equipped with Wi-Fi and the ability to get HIV test results in 20 minutes.
Ammerman, medical director of the van clinic and a clinical professor of adolescent medicine at Stanford University, nods sympathetically as he listens. In his 20 years of working with the program, he says, he has treated thousands of uninsured and homeless young people ages 24 and under.
[For more of this story, written by Farida Jhabvala Romero, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...re-to-homeless-youth]
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