Initiative on Health and Homelessness

Who We Are

The Initiative on Health and Homelessness aims to foster a community of researchers and practitioners focusing on health and homelessness through three primary strategies:

      1. Expanding educational offerings
      2. Facilitating researcher efforts
      3. Fostering communication and collaboration

Expanding Educational Offerings

IHH engages postgraduate (MPH, Ph.D., and DrPH) students, as well as Fellows of Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, by:

      • Enhancing the Harvard Chan School curriculum with case studies and educational resources focused on homelessness and health
      • Providing students with research opportunities, fellowships, and fieldwork to expose them to successful models and innovative ideas to address the issue of homelessness

Facilitating Researcher Efforts

IHH works to foster a pipeline of homelessness researchers, by:

      • Establishing an academic agenda for homelessness research and evaluation based on the fundamental principles of racial, economic, and social equity

      • Connecting researchers to external funding opportunities and providing pilot start-up funding to explore new research questions and experimental approaches

      • Facilitating mentoring opportunities for junior researchers

      • Pairing faculty with student support

Fostering Communication and Collaboration

IHH strives to create a community of purpose and a platform for information sharing by:

      • Methodically identifying & engaging research, education, and practice partners nationally
      • Encouraging collaboration opportunities between students, researchers, practitioners, and community partners
      • Fostering outreach and information sharing via a monthly newsletter, a monthly seminar series highlighting leaders in the field, and regular meetings of homelessness researchers
      • Contributing to and disseminating peer-reviewed literature that supports informed policymaking and scalable interventions