India is a Midwest transplant who started as a volunteer and immediately fell in love with the Open Table Nashville way – building relationships and standing in solidarity with our unhoused friends. She aims to use her own lived experience and background in public health to advocate with and for people experiencing homelessness and affordable housing by merging efforts from local government, advocacy, organizing, and research sectors. She is an abolitionist who believes housing is a fundamental human right and supports housing first, harm reduction, and trauma-informed models. “You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.” - Grace Lee Boggs
What would you like future physicians who are working with people experiencing homelessness to know?
People do not chose to be homeless. The policy choices that we make as a society force people into homelessness and then trap them there. Homelessness is at the crux of nearly every public health issue and is entirely solvable, if the political will is there.