Course Objectives and Background

This course aims to bridge the gap between those experiencing homelessness and their care providers by fostering empathy and understanding through engaging and interactive online content and interviews with individuals with lived experience. This course aligns itself around the person-first perspective and amplifies the voices of people with lived experience. Person-first language humanizes people by putting emphasis on the person and not defining people by their disabilities, conditions, or situations. The person-first perspective is evident in the organization and language of the modules. This perspective drove the organization of the written content to function as a supplement to the lived experience videos. In addition, person-first language is utilized throughout the module when talking about homelessness and the people who experience it. Examples of this include people experiencing homelessness, individuals living on the street, and those who are unhoused. This is in contrast to language that is not person-first, such as homeless people, the homeless, and homeless individuals.

Goals and Objectives

The goal of this course is that learners will see individuals experiencing homelessness as people first.

Learners can expect to:

Recognize the extreme healthcare need in your community for individuals experiencing homelessness.
Identify societal myths and biases around homelessness.
Plan actionable ways to be involved around homelessness locally.

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Dell Medical School partnered with a variety of individuals with lived experience to bring this free educational resource to life. The Austin Youth Collective (AYC) at LifeWorks was instrumental to the development of the course content and structure. The Austin Youth Collective is an advocacy group made up of youth with lived experience of homelessness or housing insecurity. With funding from the University of Texas Kenneth Shine, M.D., Health Science Academy and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, faculty and staff were able to collaborate with AYC in 2019. Over the course of the year, youth were able to drive the visioning process of what they hoped we would share with future health professionals in a new tool called Voices from the Street. This tool launched in January 2020 and provides the backbone for much of this current course’s content. Along with Voices from the Street, this course also builds upon an existing co-listed course for medical and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin called Understanding Homelessness.

Part of our work with the youth involved adopting a humble approach to understanding their experience and allowing their expertise to drive content creation. Whenever possible, we have tried to stay true to the vision of our partners with lived experience.

This project was overseen by Cathy Stacy, Principal Investigator, and Kathryn Flowers, Project Manager. Research and development by Kathryn Flowers, Danica Fraher, and Genesis A. Herebia. Course writing by Danica Fraher and Kathryn Flowers, using the conceptual direction generated by the LifeWorks Austin Youth Collective and other community partners. Graphic design, Canvas integration, and writing support by Genesis A. Herebia. Additional support provided by Stephanie Reed.