Access to Health and Homelessness Reduction Research Paper

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Initiative for Homelessness Reduction and Access to Health

Population chosen and reason for the choice. What data and/or public policy support your choice?

According to federal law, homeless individuals are those lacking an adequate, stable, and regular nighttime dwelling. Their primary nighttime abodes include: (a) Institutions offering temporary residence to those meant to be institutionalized; (b) Supervised private or public organization-run shelters offering temporary accommodation; or (c) Private or public places not typically utilized or meant for regular human sleeping accommodation. Individuals who run away from home due to domestic violence and those discharged from establishments and lacking a set residence to stay at within a week’s time are also considered homeless. Excluded individuals include those apprehended for felonies or housed in correctional facilities. Several federal bodies besides the Housing & Urban Development Department (HUD) interpret the law taking into account particular initiatives, reflected by initiative regulations (Elwell-Sutton et.al 2016).

Housing was recognized as a fundamental right by the UNO in the year 1991, with the US having effectively decreased its homelessness rate, on the whole, by twenty percent from 2005 to 2013. According to the HUD’s 2016 congressional Annual Homeless Assessment Report figures, in the year 2016, 549,928 individuals were homeless on one single night; thirty-two percent of these stayed the night in unsheltered areas. While America has achieved considerable headway in its effort to eliminate homelessness through its 2010 Opening Doors strategy, it continues to be an unmanageable public health issue (Zerger et.al 2008).

Moreover, homeless individuals depict elevated chronic physical and psychological illness rates, co-occurring health issues, and affordable accommodation and healthcare-related impediments. Further, homeless persons overuse emergency facilities, resulting in elevated treatment expenses (Elwell-Sutton et.al 2016).

Insofar as homeless persons have accessibility to requisite healthcare amenities, they have depended on facilities like clinics, hospitals, ERs, etc. catering to poor individuals. The destitute (whether homeless or not) encounter several healthcare access-related barriers. Impediments are greater in case of the homeless. Realization of homeless individuals’ unique healthcare requirements has prompted the institution of special health services targeted at them. When describing and delivering such services, providers need to consider homeless individuals’ heterogeneity and community structure. But irrespective of the abovementioned differences or regional service differences, the homeless are at greater risk of contracting particular ailments, struggle with accessing care, and prove more difficult to treat as compared to others, owing to their lack of residence. Likewise, irrespective of differences in financing levels, support and history, among other things, endeavors to offer physical and psychological healthcare to the homeless share a few common characteristics as well. They stemmed as a reaction to an emergency, and not as a component of a carefully planned strategy. Services were typically taken to the homeless, instead of waiting for the homeless to come seeking them. Furthermore, they depend, ever more, on public financing, as the issue is now unmanageable by private sector organizations (Lashley, 2007).

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In spite of a certain degree of progress in the past many decades, enormous barriers continue to exist. Accelerating attempts at decreasing gaps in health and healthcare call for increased community commitment towards improving homeless persons’ health (Lashley, 2007).

What outcomes do you wish to achieve? Be specific and make sure they are measurable.

I intend to launch a project offering supportive housing service access and a mini mobile healthcare clinic for no less than half the homeless population of the nation in the succeeding 5 years (Elwell-Sutton et.al 2016).

To this end, housing must be subsidized for poor households, means to attain financial stability ought to be provided via employment support and disability income access, and permanent supportive accommodations must be offered to individuals suffering from complex health issues. Besides, future integrated service innovations must be promoted for the homeless (Freeman et.al 1987).

Sound evidence-based measures to prevent homelessness ought to be developed and supported, including transition, discharge, or release planning; protection order, safety planning, and legal support access in case of abuse victims; rigorous case management; family strengthening; landlord intervention; and intra- and inter-organizational approaches (Zerger et.al 2008).

Inter-agency coordination and organizational development must be fostered. Collaboration of institutions in the areas of housing, AIDS/HIV prevention/treatment, drug/alcohol abuse prevention/treatment, criminal justice, and psychiatry can help deliver integrated, holistic services for preventing homelessness (Freeman et.al 1987).

An examination of the way Health and Human Services Department (HHS) agencies synthesize, perform, or fund health service, epidemiological, or interventional studies on the subject of homelessness protection/risk factors and identification of preventive technique for saving high-risk individuals from personal and housing instability patterns potentially ending in homelessness may also help (Elwell-Sutton et.al 2016).

Testing of different strategies by societies and governments for developing an exhaustive, coordinated plan for preventing homelessness must be promoted (for instance, an infrastructure may be established to support prevention, enable flexible fund usage, and support the forging of systematic alliances between healthcare systems and providers).

A point to note is: I have attempted to explore diverse services introduces over several years, and not merely specialized or newly-developed ones. In my analysis, I have only noted separate initiatives and services, and no single service 'system’ at all (Lashley, 2007).

How/when will you measure outcomes that were met?

For ascertaining outcome accomplishment levels by the initiative, the parameters mentioned below will be considered: Percentage decrease in unsheltered individuals; Homeless persons with healthcare access; Growth in homeless….....

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