Humans of DFCM — Dr. Naheed Dosani

Dr. Naheed Dosani, an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at the University of Toronto and a palliative care physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, has transformed the way unhoused people receive person-centered, trauma-informed palliative care. His practice extends far beyond hospital walls, reaching into communities, shelters and city streets. His career is rooted in a simple belief: that palliative care is a human right, not a privilege.

“At my core, I’m a frontline clinician who believes deeply in the dignity of every person,” he says. “Especially those who are most often forgotten in our health system: people experiencing homelessness, poverty, racism, trauma or substance use health issues. My role as a physician is also to be an advocate and accomplice in the pursuit of health equity.”

While completing his family medicine training at the University of Toronto and the conjoint Palliative Medicine Residency Program, Dr. Dosani began to see the extreme inequities faced by people living in poverty, homelessness and with complex mental health and substance use challenges.

“These weren’t just clinical gaps,” he reflects. “They were manifestations of structural injustice.”

During his residency, he witnessed people dying in shelters, on the streets and in precarious housing who were often alone, in pain and without access to basic healthcare.

“These were people living with advanced cancer, organ failure, HIV or complications from substance use, navigating a system never designed for them,” he says.

After completing residency, Dr. Dosani joined Inner City Health Associates (ICHA), where he founded Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless (PEACH). PEACH meets the needs of people with life-limiting illnesses who are experiencing homelessness or unstable housing, providing compassionate and mobile, community-based care.

What began as a small, tight-knit team has grown into the largest nationally recognized model of equity-oriented palliative care.

“We had a mission: to meet people where they are, literally and figuratively, and to provide dignity at the end of life to those too often left behind by traditional models of care,” Dr. Dosani explains. 

From the very beginning, he was extremely passionate about promoting equity in healthcare, specifically within palliative care. “We had to bring palliative care directly to people who had been historically excluded from it; people experiencing homelessness, poverty, trauma, racism and structural vulnerability.”

Today, the PEACH team is fully interdisciplinary, including physicians, nurses, health navigators, home-care coordinators, peer workers with lived experience and community-based professionals.

“Our work takes place wherever our clients are: on the street, in encampments, shelters, drop-ins, rooming houses, transitional housing units and increasingly in hospice and long-term care,” he says. The team is now collaborating with 23 groups across Canada to support locally driven models that adapt PEACH principles to their own communities.

Toronto Public Health data shows that the median age at death for unhoused women in the city is 36. Against this stark backdrop, Dr. Dosani has worked tirelessly to shift the narrative, bringing together palliative care and family medicine to support people too often overlooked.

Blending these two disciplines is challenging, but for Dr. Dosani, their partnership is natural.

“Both are about relationships, trust and care that honours who people are, not just what they’re diagnosed with,” he says. “Together, they remind us that in a world that often forgets the most vulnerable, every life matters, right to the very end.”

In his commitment to giving back, he shares the following advice with students entering the health care field: “Never underestimate the power of proximity. The closer you are to the realities of people who are structurally marginalized, the more clearly you will see what needs to change and the more equipped you’ll be to help change it.”

He urges students to listen deeply and approach the work with humility and curiosity. Advocacy is both collective and clinical, and sustaining joy and compassion is essential to making care more humane.

Humans of DFCM is a monthly news series profiling the department’s faculty, staff, and learners. If you know someone who you think should be part of this series, please email dfcm.commsasst@utoronto.ca.