City Health Team Administers Vaccines, Distributes Naloxone at 29 Locations During Homeless Count

A Pasadena Public Health Department team visited 29 locations across the city during the annual Homeless Count on January 21-22, administering 30 vaccines and distributing 12 boxes of naloxone to people experiencing homelessness, the department reported.

The six-member Vaccine Strike Team — composed of two Community Service Representatives, an Administrative Specialist, a Licensed Vocational Nurse, a Public Health Nurse, and a Division Manager — deployed alongside approximately 200 volunteers who fanned out across Pasadena to count and survey the city’s unhoused residents, according to the City Manager’s weekly newsletter published February 11. The team operated in partnership with Huntington Health.

During what the department described as a short deployment window, the team administered 12 COVID-19 vaccines, 12 flu vaccines, and six hepatitis A vaccines. It also distributed 12 boxes of naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, and provided education on how to administer it, according to Manuel Carmona, Pasadena’s Director of Public Health.

The health deployment was embedded within the 2026 Point-in-Time Homeless Count, an annual effort organized by the city’s Department of Housing in collaboration with the Pasadena Partnership to End Homelessness. Pasadena conducts its count independently from the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count led by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which covers the rest of the county.

Pasadena has paired vaccine strike teams with its homeless count for at least three consecutive years. In 2025, teams led by the department’s Pasadena Outreach Response Team and Huntington Hospital nursing staff provided flu, COVID-19, and hepatitis A vaccines along with naloxone kits during that year’s count on February 19-20. In 2024, the department deployed two vaccine strike teams that administered COVID-19 and flu vaccines and distributed Narcan kits.

The most recent count with published results — the 2025 Point-in-Time Count, which was postponed one month because of the Eaton Fire — found 581 people experiencing homelessness in Pasadena on a single night, a 4% increase from 2024. Of those, 342 were unsheltered. The 2026 count results are expected by June.

“The community response has been incredibly encouraging,” Christina Kasali, the city’s Homeless Count Coordinator, said in a statement following the count. “We surpassed our volunteer recruitment goals ahead of schedule, demonstrating that Pasadena residents view homelessness as a critical problem that is deserving of time and attention.”

The Vaccine Strike Team is part of the Pasadena Public Health Department’s broader effort to deliver services in the field rather than waiting for residents to seek them out. The department’s Pasadena Outreach Response Team, formed in 2018 in partnership with the Fire Department, Union Station Homeless Services, and Huntington Health, provides year-round case management and health services to people experiencing homelessness.

Pasadena has maintained its own independent local health jurisdiction since 1892 — one of only three cities in California to do so. For more information about the department’s homeless outreach and preventive health services, residents can visit cityofpasadena.net/homeless-services.

Kasali said 48% of the approximately 200 volunteers who participated in the 2026 count were first-time participants. The count, which Pasadena has conducted annually since 1992, provides data used by federal, state, and county funders to allocate grants for homeless services.