Bio Sketch
Dr. O'Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1982, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1985.  In 1985, Dr. O'Connell began full time clinical work with homeless individuals as the founding physician of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.  Dr. O'Connell is now President of the program, which now serves over 11,000 homeless persons each year in three hospital-based clinics and over 80 shelters and other outreach sites in Boston.

In 1993, Dr. O'Connell founded BHCHP's Barbara McInnis House, a freestanding medical respite program which has grown to 104 beds and that provides acute, sub-acute, peri-operative, rehabilitative, recuperative, and palliative end-of-life care for homeless men and women who would otherwise require costly acute care hospitalizations.  Working with the MGH Laboratory of Computer Science, Dr. O'Connell designed and implemented the nation's first computerized medical records for a homeless program in 1995. 

From 1989 until 1996, Dr. O'Connell served as the National Program Director of the Homeless Families Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

Dr. O'Connell is the editor of The Health Care of Homeless Persons: A Manual of Communicable Diseases and Common Problems in Shelters and on the Streets, and an editor of A Practical Approach to Pulmonary Medicine.  

MD, 1982, Harvard Medical School
MA, 1972, Theology