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In the greater Boston area, where nearly 13,000 individuals can experience homelessness on a given night, many nonprofits work to address systemic housing issues. But the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program has taken a different approach — emphasizing immediate and continuous care.

At a Thursday night talk at the Cambridge Public Library, the program’s founder and president — James J. “Jim” O’Connell, a Harvard Medical School assistant professor — said the continuity of care is of primary importance to the providers at BHCHP.

“We talk a lot about being caught in this interesting world where we’ve had to accept that we don’t end homelessness,” O’Connell said. “We’re taking care of people, and as we take care of people, we’re not fixing the housing problem. We’re not fixing the larger problem.”

BHCHP began in 1985 as a grant-funded health collective offering freelance services at clinics and on the street. O’Connell aims for the program to lessen the burden on shelters, so that they can concentrate on non-health related issues.

The program has grown to serve 11,000 people across around 30 shelter and hospital clinics, including two within Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Medical Center, and a street team for those living outside the shelter system.

At Thursday’s talk, which was co-sponsored by National Alliance on Mental Illness Cambridge/Middlesex , O’Connell said the primary drivers of homelessness are not within the control of organizations like BHCHP, which works with local clinics and hospitals to provide health care to homeless residents in the Greater Boston area.

“When you see who has become homeless and stayed there the longest, it’s usually people who have been failed by our school systems, failed by our welfare system, failed by our mental health systems, our medical system, public health systems, and failed by our justice system,” he said.

“But I turn around and, in the meantime, we have all these people that are suffering, who are going to be suffering for the next many years until we fix that,” O’Connell added. “Somebody has to take care of them.”

O’Connell has worked with the BHCHP since its beginnings. When he joined as the nascent organization’s first full-time doctor, the project was led by a coalition of health providers, advocates for the homeless, and formerly homeless Boston residents. Together, the coalition developed a model of care for O’Connell and other medical professionals to follow.

They emphasized that the BHCHP’s work should be framed as social justice, rather than charity.

“Our program was put together by these really feisty people who had lived in the shelters or on the streets, many of whom suffered from all the things you can imagine,” O’Connell said.

This framing initially caused BHCHP to reject the help of volunteers, student interns and residents, and researchers in favor of professional staffers.

“We need people to just do this as a job,” O’Connell said. “You want to create a job, it doesn’t depend on you being passionate about saving people, but passionate about caring.”

While BHCHP later began accepting volunteers and interns, a few members from this original advisory group continue to serve on the BHCHP board of directors — including former homeless individuals.

“I’ve always lived in a world where the people we serve are actually people that hire and fire us, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to us,” O’Connell said.

Beyond housing support, BHCHP also provides mental health services. But O’Connell said that the program’s ability to meet the mental health needs of their patrons has not been as successful.

“It makes me crazy that we haven’t brought parity to the mental health system that we have in the medical system,” he said. He specifically cited the limitations on government funding for psychiatric care as a hurdle for inpatient care for mental illnesses.

“One of the problems for us was that Medicaid doesn’t fund psychiatry the way it funds medicine for mental health,” he added.

Currently, BHCHP has two psychiatrists working for the program, funded by MGH as a “community benefit.”

“What happens to everybody, at least to all of our clinicians, is you get so angry that society lets this happen, and you just want to scream,” O’Connell said.

But despite the challenges, O’Connell said he has found encouragement to continue from Barbara McInnis, a nurse and founding member of BHCHP.

“She looked at me, she said, ‘What? Do you think you’re God or something? Just get to work,’” he said.