Margot Kushel MD, Professor of Medicine, UCSF; Director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative
Margot Kushel, MD is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center and the Director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations. Margot’s research focuses on reducing the burden of homelessness on health through examining efforts to prevent and end homelessness and mitigating the effects of housing instability on health care outcomes. She uses a variety of research methodologies with an aim towards informing the development of programs and policies to end homelessness via understanding the complex interactions between health and housing. She has a particular interest in homelessness in older adults and homelessness in medically complicated individuals. She is the PI of an NIA funded R01 that developed the HOPE HOME (Health Outcomes in Populations Experiencing Homelessness in Older Middle agE) cohort, an ongoing longitudinal cohort study examining the causes and effects of homelessness on adults aged 50 and over in Oakland, CA. She is the Co-PI (with Kelly Knight, PhD) of a companion study examining involvement of families in rehousing older adults experiencing homeless. Passionate about training the next generation of researchers seeking to improve outcomes in vulnerable populations, she is the PI of a K24 award from NIA to mentor junior investigators in aging in vulnerable populations and directs the UCSF Primary Care Research Fellowship. Margot works with diverse stakeholders to implement programmatic and policy changes based on her research. She maintains an active clinical practice at ZSFG in both primary care and inpatient medicine.