A CNN HERO

STUDENT:
ROSADO

MERINO,

KATHERINE

MELISSA
CYCLE:
ADVANCED IV
TEACHER:
TATAJE SNCHEZ,
RITA NAHIR
TOPIC:
A CNN HERO DR. JIM WITHERS

A CNN HERO
Today Im going to talk about a special hero who takes care for the homeless
people in Pittsburgh. Im talking about Jim Withers. He is a doctor, but he
isnt an ordinary doctor, He is a man with a special mission.

For 23 years, Jim Withers has been treating the

homeless under bridges, in alleys and along
riverbanks like a Doctor Delivery.
Who is Jim Withers? I know that he is 58 years
old

and

he

studied

at

the

University

of

Pittsburgh School Medicine. In May 1992, he

started practicing in the emerging field of
Street Medicine. But he realized that he
needed a guide to the streets, and after some searching, he met Shallows,
who was 54 and helped him build trust and establish street cred whit the
local homeless population.
One day, he met a man Charlie Barringer who had a lot of psychological
diseases and had contracted bronchitis; he taught him a special phrase:
When I was doing time, I learned a Native American saying, a philosophy:
Laugh one, feel good; laugh twice, feel twice as good and he added
Everyday above ground is a good day. And with that, Dr. Withers learned
about the cruel life that homeless has and with his team, they help a lot of
homeless and do their best to keep them above ground.
Dr. Jim Withers appeared at Pittsburgh
Magazine in April, 2011 and then in 2015,
he was nominated to be a CNN hero

where he gave an interview about

his organization and his team, also
he won a price of 10.000 dollars
and he was recognized as a CNN Hero in a special TV Program called: An All
Star Tribute.
For more than 20 years, Dr. Jim Withers has led his medical skills to the
streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, offering free quality assistance to the
homeless.
Withers' one-man mission became a citywide program called Operation
Safety Net. Since 1992, the group has reached more than 10,000 individuals
and helped more than 1,200 of them transition into housing. In addition to

street rounds, the program has a mobile van, drop-in centers and a primary
health clinic, all where the homeless can access medical care.
Withers says that doing walking rounds can be a
challenge to keep up with where the camps are
because homeless have to keep moving to avoid
evicted. All the teams try to keep down to four
people

because

they

dont

want

to

invade

homeless space with a lot of people. It's their

home. So there's an outreach expert who knows
the field and knows the people. There's himself or
a medical person, and then they always have a
student or two. And they bring a social worker with
them.
On the streets they see a lot of things that have to do with the weather and
the difficulties of sleeping out there: frostbite, dehydration, hypothermia.
But they also have everyday things, like high blood pressure, diabetes,
coughs and colds, pneumonia, injuries. They've seen people with cancers,
liver failure, people who needed dialysis that they actually took to dialysis
from the street. They've seen almost everything that They've seen clinically
and a few things that they hadn't. So it's a very rich environment for
medical teaching, unfortunately.
Dr. Withers think that practicing Street Medicine, they involve the students
to do their best to help people because the career is about that.
He hopes that every person who is still on the streets will have medical care.
And He would love to see every medical school have a classroom of the
streets.
He has dedicated himself to find anyone, anywhere, who's interested in
doing medical care to their own street people and helping them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Pittsburgh Magazine Online A Man and his Mission: Dr. Jim Withers:
http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Pittsburgh-Magazine/May2011/A-Man-and-His-Mission-Dr-Jim-Withers/
2. CNN Heroes Online Meet the doctor who treats the homeless
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/07/us/cnn-heroes-homeless-doctorjim-withers/
3. Operation Safety Net Pittsburgh Mercy A Heritage of Hope. Online
Page.
https://www.pittsburghmercy.org/operation-safety-net/