Hutton Lecture Series of the Rhetoric and Composition Program at Purdue University

Dr. Natalia Rodriguez (Public Health) and I had the pleasure of presenting insights from our collaboration in the Hutton Lecture Series at Purdue, the results of which were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2022.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated health and social inequities for homeless populations who face stigma and marginalization that often disenfranchise them from health and social services and expose them to conditions for heightened risk of infection and adverse outcomes. In January 2021, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) published a report outlining the council’s efforts and national outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on people experiencing homelessness through December 31, 2020.  

​In this talk, we discussed how we interrogated the USICH report’s findings and overall framing. As scholars of public health and anthropology, we draw attention to significant flaws in the report’s evidentiary base, challenge core assumptions in the report’s discursive assumptions, and discuss data negating several key conclusions based on their ongoing community-based participatory research study on homelessness during COVID-19 in Indiana.