Improving Health Care for Homeless People
Addressing the medical issues of homeless people is the health equity challenge of our time. The most recent US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report on homelessness, published in 2015, estimated that about 564 000 homeless people in the United States live in shelters and on the streets. This figure, based on a point-in-time snapshot on a single night each January, may well be an underestimate, given varying definitions of homelessness, peripatetic populations, and the lack of robust surveillance systems.
Addressing the medical issues of homeless people is the health equity challenge of our time. The most recent US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report on homelessness, published in 2015, estimated that about 564 000 homeless people in the United States live in shelters and on the streets. This figure, based on a point-in-time snapshot on a single night each January, may well be an underestimate, given varying definitions of homelessness, peripatetic populations, and the lack of robust surveillance systems.
Despite official figures documented in the HUD report noting an overall recent population decline of about 11% from 2007 to 2015, numbers of homeless individuals have increased in cities with rising housing costs, such as New York and Los Angeles. Some estimate as many as 2.3 million to 3.5 million individuals experience homelessness each year; persons of color are disproportionately affected, with one-third unsheltered.
This vulnerable population comprises a human kaleidoscope of people often excluded from mainstream society: runaways, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) youth, those targeted by domestic violence, struggling veterans, displaced factory workers, migrant laborers, refugees, illiterate individuals, fragile elderly persons, and those discharged from mental hospitals or overcrowded prisons. For many, the daily struggle for food, shelter, clothing, and safety relegates health to a distant priority which, in turn, exacerbates disease, complicates treatment, and drives excess mortality. One recent analysis shows death rates for homeless youth are more than 10 times greater than for the general population.
