Researchers often hope that their work will inform social change. The questions that motivate them to pursue research careers in the first place often stem from observations about gaps between the world as we wish it to be and the world as it is, accompanied by a deep curiosity about how it might be made different. Researchers view their profession as providing important information about what is, what could be, and how to get there. However, if research is to inform social change, we must first change the way in which research is done.

Engaging the Intersection of Housing and Health offers case studies of research that is interdisciplinary, stakeholder-engaged and intentionally designed for “translation” into practice. There are numerous ways in which housing and health are intertwined. This intertwining—which is the focus of this volume—is lived daily by the children whose asthma is exacerbated by mold in their homes, the adults whose mental illness increases their risk for homelessness and whose homelessness worsens their mental and physical health, the seniors whose home environment enhances their risk of falls, and the families who must choose between paying for housing and paying for healthcare.

Michael Walsh grew up on a dairy farm in western Minnesota and came out of the closet in his small-town newspaper in 1992. His poetry books include The Dirt Riddles as well as two chapbooks, Adam Walking the Garden and Sleepwalks. With James Crews, he is coeditor of Queer Nature, a poetry anthology also forthcoming from Autumn House Press. His poems and stories have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, the Chattahoochee Review, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Great River Review, The Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner. He lives in Minneapolis, MN, and works as a curriculum administrator at the University of Minnesota.