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SPH Walks to Raise Funds, Awareness to End Homelessness

A team from the School of Public Health gathered at Boston Common for the 9th annual Winter Walk, an event organized to demonstrate solidarity with individuals facing homelessness and to raise funds for local service organizations.

Following a two-hour delay due to heavy snow, several thousand people bundled up and turned out for the ninth annual Boston Winter Walk, a roughly 2-mile loop of Boston Common organized by the nonprofit organization Winter Walk to show solidarity and garner support for people experiencing homelessness. For the first time, attendees included a team from the School of Public Health.

Coordinated by Sarah Weber, a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology, and Aboli Goghari, senior research fellow in the Department of Global Health, the team invited faculty, staff, and students to join their colleagues and peers in walking to draw attention to homelessness as a public health crisis.

Research consistently demonstrates that the absence of safe, affordable housing has devastating effects on a person’s physical and mental health. The homeless population experiences higher rates of infectious disease, mental illness, substance use disorder, and injury and interpersonal violence compared to the general population, all of which contribute to a drop in average life expectancy from 78 years for housed individuals to just 50 years among the unhoused. As temperatures plunge, the risks of the environmental exposure associated with homelessness become more evident and the need for shelter and other services more pressing.

Founded in 2016 by Paul English, a tech entrepreneur and the co-founder of the travel search engine Kayak, alongside Ari Barbanell and Robyn Glaser, Winter Walk aims to raise a total of $500,000 by the end of February 2025 to support the delivery of services to people experiencing homelessness across Boston. Funds raised by Team BUSPH and others will go directly to the nonprofit’s 17 local partner organizations, including Boston Medical Center, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, FamilyAid, St. Francis House, Pine Street Inn, and Women’s Lunch Place, among others.

As of February 21, the 2025 fundraising goal was 85% met with $425,908 raised. Thanks to the SPH community’s support, Team BUSPH has contributed $3,241 to date—far exceeding the group’s original fundraising goal of $2,500.

“It was so inspiring to see the community show up in this brutal winter to raise awareness and funds for the organisations working tirelessly to help our homeless and unhoused neighbours in Boston. We are so so thankful for all the support from our network,” wrote Goghari in a recent post to LinkedIn. “The work, however, doesn’t stop here.”

Nationally, homelessness is on the rise. In the Greater Boston area, estimates indicate that the number of people experiencing homelessness rose 67 percent from January 2023 to January 2024 and at the state level, Massachusetts has seen one of the most dramatic increases in homelessness nationwide.