BOSTON —

In 1985, dueling health crises struck Boston's ballooning homeless population, an outbreak of tuberculosis and the AIDS epidemic.

Little did Dr. Jim O'Connell know then that those factors would help shape his entire career.

Fresh out of residency, with plans to become an oncologist, the Harvard educated doctor agreed, for a year, to take a job the city was struggling to fill. He became the founding physician of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless program, BHCHP .

“You can do anything for a year, I thought,” O’Connell said.

Funded by a grant, the program's goal was to deliver continuity of care for unhoused people.

"I didn't know anything about homelessness. So, this was just a chance to be a doctor in a world I didn't know at all," he said.

Having never been inside a shelt

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