Building Responsive Integrated Delivery of Health and Social Care through Mobile Clinics

Investigators: Professor Suzanne Nielsen, Professor Elizabeth Sturgiss, Professor Helen Skouteris, A/Prof Jane Desborough, Prof Dennis Petrie, Dr Katelyn Barnes, A/Prof Anna Olsen, Professor Andrea Williamson, Dr Melissa Savaglio, Nilakshi Gunatillaka, Dr Rajna Ogrin (Bolton Clarke), Dr Dean Membrey (cohealth), Dr Sarah Lord (Wheels of Wellness), Dr George Hatvani (Launch Housing), Dr Galina Daraganova (SEMPHN), Bronwyn Hendry (Directions Health Services),Dr Melanie Dorrington (ACT Health), Chris Gough (Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy)

Australia’s current healthcare system relies heavily on fixed-site clinics and appointment-based services. But for people experiencing homelessness, traveling to a clinic, navigating complex health systems, and keeping scheduled appointments isn't always possible.  This mismatch leads to fragmented, episodic care, preventable illnesses, and poorer health outcomes—all while placing significant pressure on overall healthcare resources.

International evidence shows that comprehensive and integrated mobile clinics improve health outcomes for people experiencing homelessness; yet few operate in Australia, and we have limited context-specific evidence of effectiveness.

The “Building Responsive Integrated Delivery of Health and Social Care through Mobile Clinics” project seeks to address this gap. This work builds on the Deep End Living Lab series of projects which sought to understand the healthcare experiences of people without stable housing and the healthcare workers tasked with their care. These projects highlighted the challenges people with lived experience of homelessness face when trying to access health services through fixed-site clinics which have limited flexibility with attendance time, limited accessibility and limited capacity to adapt care to people who find traditional services difficult to engage with or navigate.

Over the next four years, this new initiative will examine how integrated models of primary care can address this gap. The project has four phases:

Phase 1: Launching a national Community of Practice to pinpoint critical health and social care barriers across Victoria, Queensland, and the ACT
Phase 2: Analysing linked national data to evaluate how jurisdictional policies impact individuals' health and social care journeys
Phase 3: Rigorously co-designing scalable, integrated mobile clinic models with people with lived experience of homelessness, clinicians, and policy makers
Phase 4: Piloting and evaluating outreach models in geographically diverse sites to inform future policy and practice

To sustain long-term change, this project will establish an online Clearinghouse for Policy and Practice Transformation which will enable cross-sector collaboration, knowledge translation, and capacity building.

Funder: The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Targeted Call for Research Scheme