Dave serves as a Senior Statistician to lead the quantitative team at the BHHI. Dave has worked in the field of policy analysis for the last 14 years, primarily focusing on issues of labor standards, such as raising regional minimum wages, and expanding health care affordability and access in California. Most recently, he worked as a statistician for the UC Berkeley Labor Center where he provided the quantitative results for dozens of studies to inform legislative debates. In his first week at the Labor Center, he provided the analysis which led to requirements for San Francisco businesses to provide basic

Kenny is the Director of Research Operations at BHHI. He began working at UCSF in 2013 as an intern while attending UC Berkeley for his bachelor's degree in Psychology and Peace and Conflict Studies. He has since served as an Assistant CRC, CRC, Project Manager, and Senior Project Manager. Kenny holds an MPH from UC Berkeley. His primary professional and academic interests focus on using research methods to work with and for homeless populations and groups facing longstanding obstacles within the San Francisco Bay Area.

Marc Dones (they/them) is a Senior Advisor at BHHI. They are an American social justice advocate and policy strategist and have worked extensively in the fields of violence prevention, homelessness, affordable housing, and racial equity. Most recently, Marc served as the inaugural CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, where they oversaw a $250M budget, implemented one of the best emergency housing voucher programs in the country, and advanced national models on encampment response. Marc has held leadership positions in several organizations, including the Center for Social Innovation and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, and

Dr. Margaret Handley is a public health-trained epidemiologist in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Medicine. She is core faculty at the Action Research Center for Health and at the Benioff Housing and Homelessness Initiative. Dr. Handley’s research focuses on bridging the fields of primary care, public health, and health communication for improving health outcomes and access. She co-directs the UCSF PRISE Center, which focuses on applying implementation science methods to meet the challenges of eneven health outcomes and access to care. At BHHI she is one of the Principal Investigators along with Drs. Margot Kushel and Rebecca Sudore

Margot Kushel, MD is a Professor of Medicine at University of California San Francisco, Division Chief of the Division of Health and Society, and Director of the UCSF Action Research Center for Health and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. She is a practicing general internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of homelessness, with the goal of preventing and ending homelessness and ameliorating the effects of homelessness on health. She is the Principal Investigator of the California State Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH) and numerous NIA funded studies on

Dr. Vijayaraghavan is a practicing general internist at the San Francisco General Hospital and a researcher in tobacco control with a focus on populations experiencing homelessness. Dr. Vijayaraghavan's intervention research stems from collaborations with community organizations. As PI of two grants (22XT-0020, 25CP-0002) from the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, she collaborated with homeless shelters and supportive housing programs to implement interventions to increase access to cessation services and smoke-free policies among homeless clients. As co-investigator (PI Satterfield, DA034253-04) on an implementation and dissemination grant on a randomized controlled trial of computer-facilitated delivery of 5As for smoking cessation, she worked

Dr. Morris’ professional activities are grounded in engaging diverse partners in the development of evidence-based policy change to reduce social inequalities and improve health among underserved communities. As a Professor, Dr. Morris’ research focuses on applying epidemiological methods to study the impact of individual, social, and structural factors on disease transmission within marginalized populations. In particular, her work has focused on using qualitative and quantitative methods to examine social determinants of health within people who use drugs, including HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, worldwide. Internationally Dr. Morris has collaborated with researchers to carry out HIV and HCV prevention

Michael Duke is a medical anthropologist whose ethnographic and mixed-method work focuses primarily on the impact of contemporary and historical harm on the physical and behavioral health of Latine and Pacific Islander immigrant communities, particularly regarding drug and alcohol use, anxiety and depression, stress, and housing precarity. After receiving his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, he was a researcher at the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford, CT, where he directed several studies on HIV risk among heroin injectors, and was the PI for a series of NIH-funded binational studies focusing on drinking, masculinity, and HIV risk among

Ryan Assaf, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor at BHHI and the Division of Health and Society, a mentored faculty member in the UCSF Action Research Center for Health at ZSFG, a member of the UCSF ARCHES New Faculty Peer Cohort 25, and a 2026 UCSF John Watson Scholar. He received his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health where he also received his MPH and earned his BS at the University of California, Irvine. He recently completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, where his work centered

Shannon Smith-Bernardin, PhD, MSN, RN, is an Associate Professor in the UCSF School of Nursing, co-founder of the National Sobering Collaborative, and faculty at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.

In her role at BHHI, Usma Khan oversees strategic planning, new program development, communications, and the overall operational structure of BHHI. She works to create a strong and inclusive organizational culture that supports BHHI faculty and staff in implementing their impactful work. Usma is inspired by BHHI’s mission and the intentional emphasis on addressing structural racism and equity. Having grown up in the Bay Area, she has witnessed the dramatic rise in homelessness, as the economic divide has widened and housing costs have skyrocketed, and she is dedicated to developing solutions to this critical public health and human rights issue