Graduate students from Dr. Kelly McDermott’s MPH 622 class, Communicating for Healthy Behavior and Social Change, have created a Student Social Justice Exhibit on how corporations can have a positive impact on issues related to homelessness and housing in San Francisco.
Emily Martinez, Ellen Pelos, Joya Esagoff, and Michael Alba Huizar are all graduate students in the Masters in Public Health or Masters in Behavioral Health programs. They write “homelessness has been a chronic issue in San Francisco for many years. Despite the $300 million in city funding going towards solving homelessness, there are still about 7,500 individuals living on the streets of SF. In the past year, more pressure has been put on corporations to step up and help fight homelessness. Proposition C, a tax on companies to fund homelessness relief, will go into effect this year after it was passed in 2018. Although this tax will essentially compel large companies to support homeless services in SF, is there more that they can do? Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and supporter of Proposition C, would undoubtedly say YES. This student-made display provides an overview of homelessness in SF and recommends specific actions that corporations can take today to ensure that chronic homelessness does not exist tomorrow.
This exhibit was inspired by the School of Nursing and Health Profession’s 2019 Crawford Lecture. This year’s Crawford Lecture, scheduled for April 9th, 2019, features Dr. Ensign, the author of Catching Homelessness, Winner, 2017 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award and of Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins. She is a leading national voice in health care, homelessness, and health care for those at the margins. RSVP for the Crawford Lecture here.
