“What Caring Requires,” a panel discussion featuring three local experts on services for unhoused people, is set for 6:30 p.m., Monday, March 18, at the Wilmington Public Library.

This is the opening program for Clinton County Reads 2024, and the public is invited to hear the panel share the similarities of their work to that of Dr. Jim O’Connell, the subject of Tracy Kidder’s bestselling nonfiction book, “Rough Sleepers,” this year’s CCReads selection.

Dr. Craig Strafford, panel moderator, has devoted his medical career to the practice of obstetrics and gynecology and served as president of a large multi-specialty group practice, with locations in Ohio and West Virginia. As a lobbyist for the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology, he regularly met with members of the U.S. House and Senate to advocate for women’s health care.

For the past 20 years, he has focused on underserved women with minimal access to health care.

Other panel members are Hannah Lutz and Lee Sandlin.

Lutz is president of the Wilmington Area Ministerial Association and a volunteer at Hope House, which serves local homeless women.

Sandlin has been director of Sugartree Ministries for five years, after serving there for twenty years as a volunteer. His work is faith-based, “a calling to serve Jesus, through loving my neighbors by meeting their basic spiritual and physical needs,” Sandlin said.

Copies of “Rough Sleepers” are available at all public libraries in the county and through Books ’n’ More at booksnmore.indielite.com.