Pitt Alum and CNN Hero Jim Withers (MED ’84) is once again paving the way in “street medicine” as he serves Pittsburgh’s homeless population during the COVID-19 Pandemic. His team of care givers was one of the first in the nation to test for the novel coronavirus inside homeless camps. Now, they are challenged with adapting their approach to how they coordinate care for one of America’s most vulnerable populations.
Jim Withers (MED ’84) is putting a different spin on the term “house call,” taking to the streets of Pittsburgh to serve the unsheltered homeless population during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were fortunate to obtain COVID-19 test kits through UPMC very early,” Withers says. “We were one of the first programs in the country to test directly in the camps.”
Withers has been practicing “street medicine” for almost 30 years. He founded Operation Safety Net (OSN), an outreach program of Pittsburgh Mercy, which provides medical care to the local homeless community. Now he faces the even greater challenge of meeting the everyday needs of Pittsburgh’s homeless population during a global pandemic.
Like many health care providers, Withers and his team lack adequate personal protection equipment and other gear. They’ve also had to get creative in order to comply with federal guidelines that recommend reducing staff as much as possible to limit exposure and spread of COVID-19.
“We’ve done innovative things such as using the homeless, themselves, to call us with possible new COVID-19 cases, creating a central call-in system for all other agencies involved, and heightening our already strong relationships with emergency departments and hospitals to follow-up in cases that return to the streets,” says Withers, who was honored as a CNN Hero for pioneering street medicine.
The OSN team includes physicians, nurses, social workers, case managers, outreach coordinators, and volunteers. As this crisis unfolds, they are working to find alternative locations, tents, beds, and hygiene resources such as water buffalos, toilets, and face masks to assist the unsheltered homeless. He says Operation Safety Net has benefited from partnerships with many local and state agencies, including the Department of Human Services, Light of Life, and 412 Food Rescue, to coordinate food drop offs, improve crisis response, and find housing options and hygiene stations.
In his efforts to respond to COVID-19, Withers is joined by a few of his fellow Pitt alumni. OSN’s homeless outreach leader Daniel Palka (A&S ’14) has taken a major role in coordinating with other agencies; Todd Wahrenberger (MED ’91) at Pittsburgh Mercy has been the lead physician of the Incident Command response; and Patrick Perri (MED ’01) from the Center for Inclusion Health has helped develop street medicine COVID-19 protocols for our community and for the United States through the Street Medicine Institute. Perri was a student of Withers when he first started his street medicine work.
I look forward to seeing how this crisis weaves our community into a tighter, more loving and innovative whole, and I am certain Pitt Alumni will continue to lead that process. – Jim Withers (MED ’84)
More about Operation Safety Net
Withers began Operation Safety Net in 1992 as a “classroom of the streets” program for his medical residents and students, and street medicine has since become a global movement, making its way to six continents.
“I believe we need a component in medical education that is radically immersed in the reality of excluded persons, in order to understand how to engage in fully therapeutic relationships,” he says.
From its inception, OSN aimed to teach medical trainees how to effectively “meet people where they are” by taking to the streets of Pittsburgh to provide medical care to the homeless population. Before long, OSN proved to be much more than a teaching opportunity, growing into a vital program to serve a vulnerable population.
“It became apparent that Operation Safety Net was also a novel and strategic way to coordinate the care of a population with a mortality rate 10 times higher than that of the general population,” Withers says.
*Photos courtesy of Pittsburgh Mercy’s Operation Safety Net. Used with permission.