Street Medicine Founder To Speak At W&L Today
Jim Withers, founder of the Street Medicine Institute, will present a lecture today, Wednesday, March 26, at 5 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons as part of Washington and Lee’s Mudd Center for Ethics’ series on “How We Live & Die.”
Withers’ lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Go to the People: Ethics and Access of Street Medicine.” The event will also be streamed online at https://go.wlu.edu/ livestream.
A practicing physician in Pittsburgh, Pa., Withers began making medical visits to the city’s homeless population in 1992, motivated by the desire to reach out and serve those who had been excluded from mainstream health care systems. Withers discovered that, due to a variety of external and internal barriers, many homeless individuals were unable to access or navigate existing healthcare services and needed a different care model that would meet patients where they were.
Withers began developing this care model, emphasizing compassion, creativity and collaboration, and founded the Street Medicine Institute (SMI) as a nonprofit organization in 2009. The SMI helps develop and sustain the emerging field of street medicine while training and supporting new and existing programs worldwide. There is currently a global network of Street Medicine programs in 85 cities across 15 countries and five continents, and the initiative continues to grow.
For more information and a complete schedule of events, visit the series webpage: https://my.wlu. edu/mudd- center/programs- and-events/20242025-how-we-live-and-die.
