Community Engagement
Fellows and staff share a community-first mindset at UCSF BHHI. We ask people what they need and conduct research underpinned by strategic science, while partnering with the communities most impacted by homelessness and housing insecurity.
Our work aims to shift decision-making to communities by turning policy solutions and proven best practices into workable, successful, on-the-ground programs.
We have specific community advisory boards for some of our studies. Below are a list of community advisory board members for some of our studies.
Advanced Care Planning in Permanent Supportive Housing Community Advisory Board
- Consists of participants with lived experience of homelessness who are living in permanent supportive housing, PSH staff members, and PSH organizational leaders
HOPE HOME Community Advisory Board
- David Modersbach, Grants Manager and Special Projects, Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless
- Sharon Cornu, Executive Director, St. Mary's Center
- Brenda Goldstein, MPH, Chief of Integrated Services, LifeLong Medical Center
- Carol Wilkins, Consultant
"There's very few opportunities for people who are marginalized to be able to elevate themselves about what is considered to be their station. Through the project description, I saw this could be an opportunity for people to not just be a number, but to be a life. And for that to impact how people began to make decisions about what to do with money, resources, and space, as it relates to folks who have no control over things. And that's super important to me—to provide words and a vision to people so that they can live a life that they can imagine."
"It's great that people with lived experience are now actually being actively employed in the system that won't serve them. Because we are the living data of what is taught in books, we are the people that the statistics are about. So why not employers because we give more immediate results than having to go through all the red tape and bureaucracy and meetings. So that is innovation I see taking place in common practice. I love that, and I hope the momentum behind it keeps getting pushed forward."
"What I'm excited about is that we're looking at a solution that involves communication. And that involves connection, and that is going to actually solve things."
