Join Cambridge Forum for a discussion with Tracy Kidder and Dr. Jim O’Connell. Tracy Kidder’s, “_ROUGH SLEEPERS_” centers around one dedicated doctor and his mission to provide medical care to the homeless. The book is a powerful account of the dedicated work of “Dr. Jim” O’Connell, a physician who founded Boston Health Care for the Homeless in 1985. When O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency, the Chief of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital asked him if he would defer a prestigious fellowship to spend a year helping create an organization to bring health care to the homeless. Dr. Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse, but that one year was to turn into a lifetime working with the homeless on the streets of Boston and in his Thursday Street Clinic at MGH. Now in his 70s, Dr Jim is still captain of the “_Street Team_” who provide care for the city’s unhoused population - the people who sleep rough. “_Rough Sleepers_” is the result of spending five years shadowing O’Connell’s work bringing medical care, socks, soup, humor and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered individuals. Much as he did in his profile of Paul Farmer, Kidder explores how a small but dedicated group of people have improved and gladdened thousands of lives by facing one of America’s most difficult problems, rather than looking away.