St. Luke’s to Establish Rural Street Medicine Training Program
A federal grant will help St. Luke’s University Health Network expand care for the medically underserved populations of rural Carbon and Schuylkill counties.
St. Luke’s plans to use the $1.94 million, 5-year grant (from the Primary Care Training and Enhancement Residency Training in Street Medicine (PCTE-RTSM) initiative) to develop a Street Medicine Academic Tract within its Carbon (Rural) Family Medicine Residency program. Specifically, the grant will help St. Luke’s enhance rural family medicine residency training, equipping residents to deliver compassionate, high-quality care to individuals facing homelessness and opioid addiction.
“Meeting patients where they are takes special training and skills to help reduce barriers to healthcare,” said Danielle Godfrey, St. Luke’s Manager for Graduate Medical Education (GME) Rural Programs. “Our rural family medicine residents will learn how to best provide primary and preventative care in places like rural shelters, food pantries, in mobile outreach units and in other community settings that are often underserved.”
“In these counties, there’s an under-appreciated need and there are more and more individuals experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity,” she added.
St. Lukes’s Carbon (Rural) Family Medicine Residency program already features some street-medicine training, but the grant will allow it to develop a full Street Medicine Academic Tract. Residents will participate in structured clinical rotations that include telemedicine plus working in shelters and mobile-outreach units. They will also receive expanded behavioral health and addiction medicine training.
The grant will also allow St. Luke’s to establish Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs). The MLPs will train residents in legal advocacy and help patients secure Medicaid, disability benefits, and housing stability services.
Carbon (Rural) Family Medicine Residency program director Dr. Thomas McGinley and associate program director Dr. Greg Dobash pursued the grant after identifying the need for expanded street medicine in Carbon and Schuylkill counties. About 100 organizations applied for the grant. St. Luke’s was one of 24 to receive funding.
“This is a unique training option that will attract medical school graduates seeking specialized Rural Street Medicine training and experiences that they just can’t get elsewhere. Our local patients benefit by having medical and academic leaders that take Rural Street Medicine seriously, provide direct care, and are training the next generation of Family Medicine physicians to do the same,” Godfrey said.
About St. Luke’s
Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley’s biggest employer.
The Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.
Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 50+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 500+ residents and fellows.
St. Luke’s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2025, the Network earned straight A’s from Leapfrog across all of its 11 acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 11 years in a row, including in 2021 when its flagship University Hospital was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.
Information provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy
