Last flu season, about 3,500 homeless Boston residents, roughly half the city’s estimated homeless population, agreed to get the flu shot, said Dr. Denise De Las Nueces, medical director of Boston’s Health Care for the Homeless Program.
"I feel very humbled by it because I feel like I'm just doing my job," says Dr. Jennifer Tan, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospotal and Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.
Though this piece is from 2016, it is sadly still relevant today. Read from our Medical Director of our Family Team, Dr. Aura Obando on the social barriers that impact youth experiencing homelessness and how that shows up at school.
Jim O'Connell; Center for Primary Care at Harvard Medical School
July 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has cast health inequities into stark relief, though this hasn’t surprised those of us already immersed in the care of homeless persons.
In healthcare, being intentional about the built environment is sort of a new idea,” said Dr. Neel Shah, a director at Ariadne Labs, in a May 12 virtual roundtable discussion hosted by MASS. “Within three days, we were doing the project, which involved letting the architects peer into Mount Sinai using a GoPro camera and Zoom conferencing,” added Bucuvalas. This was MASS’s second COVID-19-related undertaking, after it advised on the construction of two emergency tent structures for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program back in March.
“I’ve learned from her that in medicine in particular, we kind of conceptualize drug use and pathologize it in a really profound way that isn’t necessarily valid,” Gaeta said.
Quarantining is complicated if you don’t have a home. “Homeless folks don’t have a place to isolate,” said David Munson, medical director of respite programs at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP). “They’re not able to physically distance in the way we have been advised to, the way that prevents the spread of this very infectious virus.”
The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program found a “stunning” rate of COVID-19 transmissions while tracing asymptomatic carriers stemming from an outbreak at Boston’s Pine Street Inn.
