Leading QuestionsNews and Updates from the Initiative on Health and Homelessnessat the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
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| | NEW BOOK by Tracey Kidder
Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People
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Check out this new book highlighting the amazing career and incredible work of IHH Steering Committee Member, Dr. Jim O’Connell!
"When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls 'a system of friends.'"
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| | Press Coverage of Rough Sleepers
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January 5, 2023
New York Times
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January 20, 2023
Harvard Gazette
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January 26, 2023
L.A. Times
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January 3, 2023
Boston Globe Magazine
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Exchange with an ExpertAddressing the Cycle of Incarceration and Homelessness Through Meaningful Community Engagement
Monik C. Jiménez, SM, Sc is an epidemiologist and an Assistant Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. Her work is centrally focused on the role of carceral control in creating and perpetuating racial/ethnic inequities in health. Her work aims to center the voices of directly impacted community members and she works with community advocacy groups to design, disseminate and conduct research focused on community identified needs.
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Description
Now more than ever, there is great urgency for public health and homeless response systems to collaborate and partner on programs and policies to serve their communities. Come learn about partnerships flourishing already in Community Solutions' Built for Zero Communities and the Built for Zero team's Theory of Change that will drive further collaborations in the space.
Featured Speaker
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January 4, 2023
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
It’s estimated that half a million Americans are experiencing homelessness. Even a brief period of housing insecurity can make existing health issues worse, and bring up new physical and mental traumas. Doctors and nurses who help patients navigate these issues have a prescription: More housing, and more services. Is it possible to end chronic homelessness, even as eviction moratoriums end and rents increase? And is a housing-first model the best way to achieve that goal? Guests on this episode include:
Ana Rausch, Vice President of Program Operations at Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County
Kimberley Richardson, therapist
Maggie Sullivan, family nurse practitioner, Boston Health Care for the Homeless and instructor and human rights fellow, FXB Center, Harvard University
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January 20, 2023
Community Solutions / Built for Zero
According to Dr. Sandro Galea, the dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, three criteria must be met for an issue to be considered a public health crisis. The problem must: 1) affect a large number of people, 2) threaten health over the long term, and 3) require large-scale solutions.
Homelessness has proven to meet all three criteria. Despite the fact that homelessness has long been a public health crisis, local public health departments have not traditionally contributed to homeless response systems.
As part of its work to help communities make homelessness rare and brief, Community Solutions has been working to understand the most strategic role for local health departments to play and how they may be most effectively engaged.
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January 24, 2023
Boston Globe
A transit hub isn’t an ideal refuge for people living on the streets, but at least it was somewhere for them to go. Today, however, sheltering in the concourse area is not an option. “They’re closing up the station and locking it at 11 o’clock at night,” said Dr. Jim O’Connell, who stops by South Station once a week during his rounds caring for the chronically homeless who choose to live on the streets rather than seek a shelter bed.
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Jnauary 16, 2023
The Seattle Times
2022 was exceptionally brutal for people living outside. A record-setting 310 people died while homeless in Seattle and across King County, a 65% jump over 2021 and an increase of over 100 people from the previous record set in 2018 (195 deaths), according to medical examiner records.
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January 13, 2023
Associated Press New
Oregon lawmakers will take up a full slate of legislation on pressing and polarizing issues from homelessness to gun control to drugs. A top priority is addressing the interconnected crises of homelessness and mental health that have seized the state for years. Dozens of new bills target sticking points that make it difficult to provide mental health and drug treatment to those in need and to build housing.
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January 11, 2023
The New York Times
Unlike in colder-weather states, most homeless people in California live on the streets, in cars and along rivers. They are experiencing a long stretch of fierce storms in a way few others are.
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January 10, 2023
Associated Press News
Oregon’s newly sworn-in Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek signed three executive orders intended to combat homelessness on her first full day in office Tuesday, a sign of how critical the shortage of affordable housing has become in the state and across the nation.
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January 7, 2023
NPR
After several years of limited progress, an 11 percent drop since 2020 has encouraged advocates and VA officials. It's the biggest reduction in five years.
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