Operation Safety Net is a health care outreach program operated through the Pittsburgh Mercy Hospital System and Catholic Health East. It provides medical care to homeless people living on the streets of Pittsburgh and recognized as one of nation’s first, targeted, full-time street medicine programs. Dr. Jim Withers started the program in 1992.

Jason DeParle is a senior writer at The New York Times and the author of American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare.

Jeffrey Sachs is one of the foremost experts on the economics of poverty. He is director of the Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002-06, Sachs was director of the U.N. Millennium Project and special […]

Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the City University of New York, is an expert on U.S. poverty and welfare policy and the author of several books.

Stephen Pimpare is a professor of american politics and public policy for the politics & society program and social work department at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of A People’s History of Poverty in America (2008) and The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages. He is working on a book titled A Celluloid […]

Lawrence M. Mead, a politics professor, teaches courses about welfare reform, politics and public policy at New York University. He co-authored Lifting Up the Poor: A Dialogue on Religion, Poverty & Welfare Reform.

Guian McKee is an associate professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia whose expertise includes poverty and civil rights. He is the author of The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (2008) — which features a War on Poverty-funded job training program that developed out of an African-American church […]

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, based in Arlington, Va., works on public policy issues affecting the mentally ill, including access to affordable housing. Contact Lauren Gleason, the director of public relations and media.

James Serpell is a professor of humane ethics and animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania’s school of veterinary medicine. He directs the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society.