Lowell Lecture
Bringing Healing To The Homeless
Date & Time
March 28, 2023 at 5 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.
Location
First Parish Church in Cambridge
3 Church Street Cambridge, MA 02138
Driving Directions
Speaker(s)
Tracy Kidder has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. His books include Mountains Beyond Mountains, Strength in What Remains, The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends, Hometown and A Truck Full of Money.
Presenting Organization
Join us for a discussion with Tracy Kidder and Dr. Jim O’Connell live at First Parish, 3 Church Street Cambridge or on Zoom. Tracy Kidder’s, “ROUGH SLEEPERS” centers around one dedicated doctor and his mission to provide medical care to the homeless. The book is a powerful account of the dedicated work of “Dr. Jim” O’Connell, a physician who founded Boston Health Care for the Homeless in 1985.
When O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency, the Chief of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital asked him if he would defer a prestigious fellowship to spend a year helping create an organization to bring health care to the homeless. Dr. Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse, but that one year was to turn into a lifetime working with the homeless on the streets of Boston and in his Thursday Street Clinic at MGH. Now in his 70s, Dr Jim is still captain of the “Street Team” who provide care for the city’s unhoused population – the people who sleep rough.