About

Origin Stories

After moving to Madison in 2011, I quickly got involved in volunteering. In 2012, a colleague, Bill Zillmer, was volunteering for the newly formed Madison Dental Initiative (MDI). The organization needed some help establishing and scaling its volunteer provider model, and Bill suggested the MDI board reach out to me for best practices. I was elected to the board, and eventually served as Interim Executive Director of MDI. 

Leading MDI put me in touch with Garrett Lee through the Homeless Services Consortium. Garrett and I quickly became good friends. We both saw the issues facing the low-income and homeless populations not as problems, but as opportunitites in disguise. This was the start of MachOneHealth. The summer of 2015 became a real turning point. 

Garrett introduced me to a core group- including Ann Catlett, Laura Mark, Marc Rosenthal, Ruthann Chun, Anica Busch, William Frahm-Gilles, Bootsy Harden, and Karen Andro- who were already discussing how to tackle the lack of healthcare access. We looked closely at existing street medicine programs around the country but decided to augment those models by mirroring MDI’s successful volunteer model to optimize our resources. 

We needed to figure out where to start. After some conversations, it became clear that feet were the biggest immediate health concern for Madison’s homeless population- foot injuries, care, and proper shoes. That would be our first target. 

We rallied our team, and I helped organize our first foot care clinic, which took place in the spring of 2016. Thanks to Karen Andro’s involvement, we set up in the basement of First United Methodist Church. It became more than just foot care- we created an entire “Healthcare Services Event.” My MDI volunteers and I were always on-site, managing check-in and addressing any dental concerns. Through Ruthann and William, we even connected people with veterinary care for their pets and were able to offer early connections to mental health and other specialized services. 

Fast forward almost a decade since that first clinic, and MachOneHealth became Madison Street Medicine. We’ve expanded our services and presence in the community manifold. To say that those of us who were there at the beginning are proud is a massive understatement.  – Aaron Warren

I, along with William Gilles, used to regularly attend the Dane County Homeless Services Consortium meetings to share information about WisCARES (Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education and Social Services) program that was in its early years at that time. As part of the discussions, we recognized that human street medicine services were lacking in Dane County. The MEDiC program was well established but was not meeting needs. So William and Ann Catlett, Aaron Warren, who was the executive director of the dental outreach program at the time, and Garrett Lee started meeting to talk about how we might do medical outreach for people experiencing homelessness. Knowing that health and the environment in which people live is connected (OneHealth), we named the organization Madison Area Care for the Homeless OneHealth (MACH One). Through our networks, including Karen Anders, who did street outreach for First United Methodist at the time, we established a monthly foot care clinic at FUMC. It was held Saturday mornings, and staffed by nurses, at least one veterinarian (me), physicians, podiatrists, and many engaged community members and students. We would serve anywhere from 10-over 30 people. We provided foot cleaning, podiatry, clean socks, shoes, along with a breakfast and a lot of respect and empathy.  Through these foot care clinics, we (I think Garrett spearheaded this) held a community health needs assessment survey so we could better understand what the community needed. This spawned a working group whose goal was to expand services in a planned and thoughtful manner, secure funding, and hire staff. We did secure funding and were able to hire Christine (Bootsy) Harden. She worked with Ann Catlett within SMPH for MachOne. More people joined the organization (as volunteers) and I ended up stepping away as other things in my life took higher priority.   – Ruthanne Chun