GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. - Community Health Programs' mobile health unit, known as the "Big Orange Bus," travels all around Berkshire County provide health care services, and now, CHP is formally introducing the newest vehicles to their fleet.

CEO Bethany Kieley said the mobile health team is vital to their mission of promoting healthy lives for people in the Berkshires.

“We are ready to be increasing our services to meet people where they are," Kieley said. "We have great service at our fixed locations, but the mobile health team is really what enables us to get out to the community, find folks who maybe aren't able to access care and bring ourselves to them rather than having them come to us.”

CHP is calling their newest mobile health unit "CHiP." Senior VP of family services and mobile health Michelle Derr said the vehicle is more compact than BOB, but has all the same capabilities for mobile health appointments.

“This is our lab, so we have all the different screening things here," Derr said, giving a walkthrough of CHiP. "We have our AED here, the emergency needles and syringes, all the PPE and vital supplies that we need. It's just smaller. And as I said, it's just nimble enough to be able to get to the places that we couldn't get with a larger van. We're also going to use it as well as the larger van. So, we'll have two vans going at the same time with a provider on each van.”

The fleet’s smallest vehicle is a refrigerated unit called "Cube," short for Ice Cube.

“We go to all nine of our CHP sites as far as North Adams down into Great Barrington," said Mary Feuer, assistant director of family services. "And we deliver fresh food to any of our families that would like it.”

Feuer said Cube has distributed about 1,000 food bags since hitting the road in February and it’s a big improvement from how they were previously delivering fresh food.

“We were using coolers, but it's really bulky and it's just messy," Feuer said. "This is just a nice, wonderful way to deliver the food and we usually set it, when we get to the site, we set it up like this. It looks like a farmer's market. So, it's nice.”

Another new addition to CHP’s team is their CEO. Kieley started in January and said she’s determined to help Community Health Programs continue to meet the needs of Berkshire County.

“You know, the Berkshire community, the CHP community, has been so warm and so welcoming, and it just tells me that CHP is seen as a key resource in the Berkshires," Kieley said. "And I just want us to continue doing the great work we do and just reach as many people as we possibly can. There's no, no end in sight to where the need is and how much we can help.”

Kieley said CHP is also going to be adding a mobile dental unit in the coming months, which will be their biggest vehicle in the fleet with three dental chairs. Further ahead, CHP is planning to open dental offices in Adams and Great Barrington to expand access to dental care in the county.