YOU ARE HERE: Healthcare Heros

Each week, we like to cover topics with global importance but with relevance to you.

Healthcare is not cheap. For Boston’s homeless, it’s an urgent need that rarely gets any attention. So a group of doctors took it upon themselves in 1998 to meet those needs for free. Rosanna Means, a doctor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, runs Women of Means which sends doctors to shelters around Boston. Women of Means is a non-profit group founded in 1998 when was working with both homeless men and women and realized women were not accessing the services as much as men. Homeless women had a lot more reasons and issues to deal with the men. For example, homeless women deal with a lot more medical problems due to feminine hygiene issues.

Lisa Marie Jenkin, a  51-year-old homeless woman, lived out of her truck and had to face feeling like an animal because she didn’t have a place to put herself together. She shares her story of humiliation and how hard it was being a woman out on the streets.

Volunteer doctors working at the Women of Means also share their perspective on how working with these women has changed their lives. One says we are all “one luck away from catastrophe.”

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