A mobile mammogram unit visits Skid Row, where women’s health services are scarce

A mobile cancer screening van parked outside one of Skid Row’s largest homeless shelters on Wednesday, offering routine mammograms to residents and passersby in what organizers said was the first visit in a new partnership.

City of Hope, the Duarte-based cancer hospital, brought a mammogram machine and medical staff to the Union Rescue Mission to screen as many women as possible, in a community where most are overdue.

Union Rescue Mission found that 87% of women living at the shelter were not up to date on breast cancer or cervical cancer screenings, according to Mary Marfisee, the shelter’s family medical services director and a UCLA faculty physician.

“We couldn’t just ignore it anymore,” Marfisee said. “We can't refer them out. It’s been harder and harder to get women's health services, so we just sat down and said, ‘No, we gotta do it ourselves.’”

The effort could be life-saving. Studies show that unhoused women have higher rates of breast cancer and are much more likely to die from it, because of delayed diagnosis and treatment.

City of Hope’s mobile screening unit launched in March 2024 and has since visited food banks, health fairs, employers and other clinics across Southern California, according to Jessica Thies, a regional nursing director at City of Hope who oversees the program.

Thies said the truck-turned-clinic was created to address what surveys consistently identify as unhoused women’s top barrier to screening: transportation.

“By bringing the mammogram to you, we just increase that access,” Thies said.

A 2025 study of women living in homeless shelters in Michigan found that 44% had been screened for breast cancer, the lowest rate for any cancer type. Respondents most commonly cited a lack of transportation as a barrier to their getting a mammogram.

Mammograms can detect breast abnormalities like tumors roughly three years before a person can feel them in a self-exam, Thies said. Breast cancer is highly curable when caught early, with a survival rate of about 99%.

Sharon Horton, 68, has lived at the Union Rescue Mission shelter for about a year and was among the women who got screened Wednesday.

“Cancer runs in my family and I know it’s very important to know at an early stage if you have it or not,” Horton said. “If you don’t get it, then you’ll be sorry later. So it’s better to know than not to know.”

The Union Rescue Mission homeless shelter in Skid Row teamed up with cancer hospital City of Hope to offer routine mammograms for unhoused women.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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Women’s health in Skid Row

Marfisee, who has worked at the shelter for nearly 20 years, said access to women's health services in the area is scarce. She runs a clinic in the shelter, but it doesn’t provide mammograms.

There is no established OB-GYN practice in the Skid Row neighborhood, Marfisee said. And community clinics are reluctant to order diagnostics like mammograms for uninsured patients because they risk getting stuck with the bill.

The partnership came together after Marfisee asked colleagues who work on Skid Row if anyone knew of a mobile mammogram unit. That’s when she got connected with City of Hope, a cancer treatment center and research organization.

UCLA medical students who staff the shelter’s clinic helped push the effort forward. Marfisse said the whole process took a few months.

The visit this week was meant to be the first of several regular stops. Marfisee said she is already planning next steps: cervical cancer screenings.

The effort is part of a broader women’s health initiative Marfisee launched at the shelter in recent months, which has included educational town halls led by UCLA medical students to raise awareness about preventive care.

“A lot of times you have to talk our population into things because they’re so mistrusting of the system,” Marfisee said. "So we told them, ‘Yep, we’re telling you, and then we’re gonna get you the service.’”

The screening gap matters in part because of who lives in Skid Row. A 2024 RAND Corporation study found that Skid Row’s unsheltered population continues to skew older and female, compared to other neighborhoods surveyed in the city of L.A., with women making up about 30% of the unsheltered population there.

Jessica Thies is a regional nursing director at City of Hope who oversees the mobile cancer screening program.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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Connecting with services

Union Rescue Mission is a Christian nonprofit homeless services provider that has operated in Los Angeles for 135 years. Its flagship five-story homeless shelter in Skid Row can house up to 1,500 people at once.

Mark Hood, Union Rescue Mission's CEO, said the partnership with City of Hope partnership is crucial.

“ Women’s health on the streets is a critical issue because most women are not getting those proactive checks,” Hood said. “They’re not getting the healthcare they need.”

Naureen Sayani, a former Union Rescue Mission resident who now works at the shelter as an apprentice in the shelter’s on-site medical clinic, said she got a mammogram Wednesday at Marfisee’s urging.

She said she believes there are plenty of medical services available in Skid Row, but too many people there are afraid to seek health help.

“ I’d like to see people take advantage of the services that are provided here,” Sayani said. “ They'll be miserable with stomach aches and whatnot, and instead of just going and asking the doctor on the second floor for help, they just suffer through it.”

Women screened for breast cancer this week are expected to get their results back within three weeks, organizers said.

If cancer is detected through any of the screenings, Marfisee said her team will work to connect patients with treatment.

“That’s when the work begins,” she said.