Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program receives HHS funding and has Federal PHS deemed status with respect to certain health or health-related claims, including medical malpractice claims, for itself and its covered individuals.
Joanna D’Afflitti
Medical Director of Respite Programs
Assistant Professor, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
Joanna D’Afflitti, MD, MPH has served as Medical Director of Respite Programs at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program since February 2021. Dually board certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine, Dr. D’Afflitti received a Master in Public Health from Columbia University in 2001 and a Doctor of Medicine from the State University of New York Downstate College of Medicine in 2007. She completed the General Internal Medicine Residency Program at Brown University/Rhode Island Hospital in 2010. After completing her residency training she served as a Primary Care Physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Chelsea Healthcare Center from 2010-2014, where she received support from the Kraft Center for Community Health as a Kraft Practitioner to lead efforts to integrate depression and substance use screening and treatment into primary care. In 2014 she accepted the position of Associate Medical Director for Primary Care Quality and Innovation in the section of General Internal Medicine at Boston Medical Center (BMC). She worked at BMC from 2014-2021 as a primary care physician, also serving as Medical Director for the Office-Based Addiction Treatment (OBAT) program from 2018-2021.
Her professional interests include caring for patient populations that have historically not been served by traditional healthcare models, integrating behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment into primary care, and applying trauma-informed and harm reduction models to the care of people experiencing homelessness.
Areas of interest: Addiction, harm reduction, primary care innovation, health equity
