MAP Director Dr. Stephen Hwang awarded Tier 1 Canada Research Chair

By Samira Prasad and Emily Holton

Today, the Government of Canada announced that MAP Director and scientist Dr. Stephen Hwang has been awarded a prestigious Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Homelessness, Housing, and Health, the first-ever Canada Research Chair on this topic.

“Being awarded a Canada Research Chair is a wonderful acknowledgement of the work my team and I are doing on homelessness and health,” Dr. Hwang shared. “It reflects our commitment to this work and it’s really great to see this area being recognized as important and worthy of scientific research.”

Dr. Hwang is one of the world’s most renowned researchers in homelessness, housing and health. He started his career at Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Toronto. He then chose to practice medicine in Boston’s Healthcare for the Homeless Program, where he went on to become medical director. Dr. Hwang was recruited to St. Michael’s as a physician and researcher in 1996. He became the director of MAP (then known as Centre for Research on Inner City Health) in 2015.

Dr. Hwang’s early work focused on establishing the links between homelessness, precarious housing and poor health. He published one of the first-ever papers in a general medical journal on this topic. A later ground-breaking study was the first to quantify the profound impact that homelessness can have on a person’s life expectancy. He also led the first national study to track the health and housing status of people who are “vulnerably housed,” i.e. spending more than 50 per cent of income on rent.

“I wanted to help advocates make their arguments for change, and to help define homelessness and precarious housing as critical health issues that urgently needed to be addressed,” said Dr. Hwang.

Over time, Dr. Hwang’s work changed in focus from defining problems to developing solutions. Dr. Hwang co-led the At Home/Chez Soi study, the largest randomized controlled trial in history to evaluate solutions to address homelessness, including the “Housing First” model, and he continues to investigate and tailor this model today.

“We know that Housing First is effective, and what we want to tackle now is how we adapt it to the challenges we see today, and improve all-around health and wellness,” he shared. “We want to demonstrate to people across Canada that there are effective interventions to improve, and even end chronic homelessness, and this research allows us to show this in a way that is based in rigorous science.”

As an internal-medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and at Seaton House, a homeless shelter for men in Toronto, Dr. Hwang sees firsthand the real and pressing issues around barriers to appropriate healthcare for this population, and his Navigator project looks to address this nationwide. Dr. Hwang says he is excited to continue to create and evaluate programs to improve the health outcomes of people experiencing homelessness and precarious housing, with a special focus on effective implementation so that they reach those who could benefit the most.

“The Canada Research Chair supports the work of my team and enables our collaboration with government agencies and non profits,” said Dr. Hwang. “Collaboration and teamwork allow us to more effectively serve people experiencing homelessness in our community in a way that truly makes their lives better.”

MAP is now home to nine Canada Research Chairs total:

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