The Basics team is honored to interview Dr. Aura Obando, the Family Team Medical Director at the Boston Health Care For The Homeless Program. According to the Annual Homeless Census, Boston has been making great strides towards addressing family homelessness. Dr. Obando leads the team that provides high quality care to 1,600 families with children during their most vulnerable time. The mother of three small children, Dr. Obando graciously talked to us about how she uses the Basic practice Maximize Love, Manage Stress for the families she serves, as well as to address the secondary trauma that she experiences herself from hearing their stories.
Some places have struggled to respond, watching deaths and illnesses mount. But this time, Worcester is a bright spot. City officials planned for an outbreak before it happened and used a coalition of agencies and community groups to meet homeless people where they live.
The relative success in Worcester has limited the illnesses and shown how long-term outreach to homeless people and drug users can pay dividends in times of crisis. The outbreak, which first flared in September, seems to be petering out at 58 confirmed cases.
“When you already have a diseased organ, adding another infection can lead to increased risk for bad outcomes” like liver failure and death, said Dr. Denise De Las Nueces, medical director of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.
To fight the outbreaks, the CDC last month took the unusual step of recommending all U.S. homeless adults get shots to prevent hepatitis A. It was the first time the agency has targeted the homeless in a routine vaccination push.
This year, over 60 AmeriCorps members are serving at locations throughout the Back Bay, South End, Fenway, and Kenmore neighborhoods. The Boston Health Care for the Homeless AmeriCorps program has 13 members providing care coordination and health education to homeless individuals and families at the Pine Street Inn, St. Francis House, and the Southampton Street Shelter.
“We got to go into BHCHP and interview patients. We would talk with them for 40 minutes, sometimes even an hour, and they would open up to us about their lives. A large proportion of those patients were dealing with OUD. Through that experience, I got a more personal look at people affected by opioids; it put a face on the problem.”
A commission formed to develop ways to reduce the harm caused by substance use disorder has filed its final report, ending its seven-month study by recommending that Massachusetts pursue a pilot drug consumption site program to help prevent deaths from opioid overdoses.
The commission was chaired by state Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders and its members included Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, state Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel, and Jessie Gaeta, chief medical officer at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, among others.
A state commission charged with reviewing "harm reduction" initiatives used elsewhere with drug users is recommending a "pilot program of one or more supervised consumption sites" as part of state efforts "to combat the opioid crisis."
As of January 16, 2019, Edwin Chindongo is three years sober. If asked a few years earlier whether he would be able to follow a path to recovery, Chindongo might have said no. “I thought if I die, I die,” Chindongo told the HPR. That was before Chindongo met Dr. Avik Chatterjee, a physician at Boston Health Care for the Homeless, a shelter-based program at the heart of Boston’s opioid epidemic. Chatterjee helped Chindongo recover from the opioid substance use disorder he had developed following his use of prescription Percocet. Chindongo now finds himself working in the very same shelter where he once lived, helping those who see themselves as incapable or undeserving of receiving help.
“The idea that people froze to death is really horrible; it is a shared societal tragedy,” said Jim O’Connell, founding director of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, who researches hypothermia among homeless people.
