On a recent evening in Portland, Oregon, Dr. William Toepper put on a paper surgical mask and made his way down a muddy road toward a row of shelters pitched beneath the fir trees. Smoke drifted up from a small fire tended by two women. One of them stood as he approached. “You doing OK?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Got any food?”
“We’ve got survivor kits,” Toepper offered, holding out a ziplock bag packed with socks, snacks, antibiotic ointment, and hand sanitizer. “I’ll take one,” the woman said. “I want to survive.”
Toepper, a retired emergency physician, is the medical director of Portland Street Medicine, a group of doctors, nurses, social workers, and other volunteers who provide care to people living on the streets, in camps, or in forests…