The interactions between homelessness and health are complex. Having a greater understanding of these interactions, of complex trauma, historical trauma including racism, and the negative effects of social exclusion on health is essential for librarians and others in supportive roles. Evidence-based interventions like inclusion health, health through housing, and health literacy supportive education, help to improve the health and life trajectories of people experiencing homelessness. Brief case studies and discussion of the role of librarians will be included in this presentation. 

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Presenter: Josephine Ensign is Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She teaches public health, health policy, and health humanities. She has been a nurse for forty years and has the lived experience of homelessness as a young adult. Her scholarship and practice as a nurse practitioner focus on trauma-informed care and health inequities for people marginalized by poverty and homelessness. Ensign is the author of Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins, and Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City. Skid Road was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in 2022. Her current book, Way Home: Ways Out of Homelessness, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2024.

This webinar is part of the PNC-MLA Health Equity and Diversity Speaker Series