Lourdes Johanna Avelar Portillo earned her PhD in the Population, Health and Place at the University of Southern California where she focused on addressing interim-level needs, specifically drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) service needs of unhoused residents in Los Angeles. Prior to USC, Johanna earned her MA in Geography at Cal State Long Beach where she explored the intersections of demographics, emotional geographies, and household water insecurity in rural areas of Santo Tomas, El Salvador. Johanna earned her BA in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. These research experiences have shaped Johanna’s research interests

Ludmilla Bade is a second-generation Californian who has lived and worked in Alameda, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. She is currently living near Santa Rosa, California where she is a returning student majoring in social and behavioral science. After graduating early from high school, she worked in many fields including the arts, office and accounting, food service, grocery, retail, property management, organizing and decluttering, and as a caregiver. After her father moved into assisted living, she could not afford market rents and became homeless. She moved into a small trailer which she drove to work

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

Marisa (she/her/ella) holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Science from Portland State University. Prior to joining BHHI, Marisa spent years working in the nonprofit sector, in roles ranging from legislative advocacy, community organizing, fundraising, communications, and direct services. Most recently, she has worked with communities experiencing housing instability and homelessness in the Portland, Oregon metro area. As the descendant of migrant farmworkers and displaced people experiencing poverty, she is passionate about centering the voices of people with lived experience of homelessness, developing

Mark Hawes, PhD, MSW, is a mixed methods social work researcher focused on eliminating obstacles to tobacco and substance use treatment among unhoused communities and those living in permanent supportive housing. He held a joint appointment as a post-doctoral fellow at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (BHHI) and the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE). While at BHHI, Dr. Hawes worked on a mixed-methods study with permanent supportive housing residents that sought to understand treatment needs centered on the co-use of tobacco with other substances. The goal was to increase the availability of services that integrate

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

Michelle S. Ochoa is a Housing Technician for the City of Roseville, California. She is passionate about working with the community and connecting people to the housing resources that they need. She experienced homelessness from ages 14-30. During this time, she longed for resources to help her get rehoused but didn’t know where to look. This lived experience inspired her to seek out employment with the government to help others navigate housing. Beyond her work with the City of Roseville, Michelle is an active member for the FoCES (Future of the Coordinated Entry System) board in Placer County, and has