Students Spearhead Safety Kit Fundraiser to Support Members of the Bronx Community
According to the Coalition for the Homeless, which provides up-to-date information on New York City’s homeless population, homelessness in New York City has reached its highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s. On any given night, there are more than 90,000 people sleeping in city shelters, with thousands more in unsheltered locations on the street.
The Safety Kits Fundraiser has a $5,000 goal; funds will be used to purchase essential items identified by those living in shelters or on the street who are served through several sites associated with Einstein’s service-learning course that address homelessness and harm reduction.
“Housing and health are directly related, and our neighbors experiencing unsheltered street homelessness are the among most vulnerable to countless acute and chronic health conditions,” said Phoebe Li, class of 2025, who with classmate Vivian Kim is incoming co-mentor on the Homelessness and Harm Reduction service-learning focus area.
Inspired to Act
Medical students Vivian Kim and Phoebe Li have spearheaded the Safety Kits Fundraiser through which nutritional snacks, water, hygiene items, and socks will be provided in kits to unhoused individuals, in an effort to help meet their essential needs.
After the two attended a Community Conversations event with unhoused individuals at local homeless shelter, the Living Room, Vivian thought there was more that she and her fellow students could do to provide food, water, and medical/hygiene products to our unhoused Bronx neighbors. The Community Conversations series, offered by the Anti-Racism Community Collaborative in Healthcare (ARCCH), is a grant-funded project involving a team comprised of medical students, medical education staff and faculty from the department of family and social medicine, and partnering community-based organizations, such as Take Back the Bronx, focused on addressing structural racism in healthcare.
Vivian and Phoebe teamed with fellow medical students Maxwell Ackerman and Jae Kim, faculty member Dr. Marc Shi and the ARCHH team to establish a Safety Kit Fundraiser that will help meet essential health and nutrition needs for unsheltered individuals. Phoebe and Maxwell are members of HOPE (Homeless Outreach Program at Einstein), which works with the Living Room in addressing the needs of their clients, while Vivian and Jae are co-presidents of SPHERE (Space in Prison for Health Education for ReEntry), which helps formerly incarcerated individuals re-enter their communities while providing them with much-needed health services. HOPE and SPHERE are both community-based student clubs.
Providing Key Necessities
The fundraiser seeks to raise $5,000 by the end of May so that safety kits can be created for distribution. It is supported by HOPE and SPHERE in conjunction with Open Hearts Initiative, an organization that assists communities across New York City that welcome homeless neighbors and advocate for housing justice in their own backyards.
“Donations will help us to provide our unhoused Bronx neighbors with nutrition, medical/hygiene products, and additional resources,” said Vivian. “Each kit will contain hand sanitizer, socks, food items, water bottles, deodorant, a toothbrush, and toothpaste, and reflect feedback received from the individuals we hope to assist.”
"As a primary care provider working in the Bronx and providing care to people who are unstably housed, it is clear that homelessness and unstable housing has myriad negative health effects,” noted Dr. Shi, an assistant professor of medicine at Einstein and an attending physician at Montefiore who works with patients experiencing homelessness. He has helped the students create the fundraiser in a way that responds to patient needs.
He added, “These kits are essential in allowing people experiencing homelessness to meet some basic needs and are a great tool to further engage people into care. It’s so encouraging to see students incorporating the social and structural determinants of health into their understandings of clinical care and finding creative ways to connect to patients who otherwise are not well served by our healthcare systems."
Once assembled, the safety kits will be delivered by the students and their mentors to those on the streets and in shelters throughout the Bronx, in coordination with medical outreach. “We believe that every single individual deserves care and safety, and we hope our fundraiser can help,” said Vivian. Those interested in supporting the Safety Kit Fundraiser can visit its GoFundMe page.
Phoebe added, “As medical students we are so privileged to have the opportunity to train in a borough that is as diverse and culturally rich as the Bronx. We feel it’s important that we work to bridge the care gap by listening to the needs of our community and providing for the most vulnerable among us.”
Posted on: Wednesday, May 22, 2024