The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for companies and organizations. (August 2020) |
Operation Safety Net (OSN) is a Street Medicine program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and one of the nation's first full-time street-based delivery medical systems.[1] OSN was founded in 1992 [2] when Dr. Jim Withers [3] and Mike Sallows began to make field visits to the homeless in Pittsburgh.[4] In time, other formerly homeless outreach workers and medical volunteers joined the effort. In 1993, OSN became a nonprofit organization under the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System with Linda Sheets as the program administrator.[5]
Operation Safety Net visits the homeless through walking teams medical outreach staff.[4] Most of OSN's work force are volunteers. Withers was one of the ten recipients out of the 463 nominees of the $120,000 by the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program in 2002 and $105,000 of which was allocated to OSN.[6]