Health problems are recognized as both causes and effects of homelessness. For example, a health problem that prevents an impoverished person from working can result in a loss of income that leads to homelessness. For those living on the streets, lack of adequate shelter and proper facilities for maintaining personal hygiene can exacerbate illness. Alcoholism, mental illnesses, diabetes, and depre…
A March 2000 survey of the homeless in Hartford, Connecticut, performed by the Institute of Outcomes Research for the Hartford Community Health Partnership (E. B. O'Keefe et al., Hartford Homeless Health Survey), counted 1,365 homeless persons on the evening of December 13, 1999. The vast majority (87%) of survey respondents reported a prior diagnosis of at least one of seventeen chronic co…
The CDC reported that in 2003, between 850,000 and 950,000 Americans were living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 405,926 of those had full-blown AIDS (HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 2003, vol. 15, March 2005). AIDS diagnoses increased in 2002 for the first time in ten years and increased another 1% between 2002 and 2003. In November 2002 the Food and Drug Administration approved a rapid te…
Before the 1960s people with chronic mental illness were often committed involuntarily to state psychiatric hospitals. The development of medications that could control the symptoms of mental illness coincided with a growing belief that involuntary hospitalization was warranted only when a mentally ill person posed a threat to him- or herself or to others. Gradually, large numbers of mentally ill …
The abuse of alcohol and other drugs has long been recognized as a major factor contributing to the problems of the homeless. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, in No Open Door: Breaking the Lock on Addiction Recovery for Homeless People (December 1998), the number of addictive disorders per capita within the homeless population is nearly twice that of the general population, an…
While a quarter of all homeless people may suffer from mental illness, and many more have past or current drug or alcohol addictions, these common stereotypes of the homeless do not fit the homeless population of children under eighteen years of age, who make up from 8% to 12% of the homeless. One research team (E. R. Danseco and E. W. Holden, "Are There Different Types of Homeless Families…
To understand why health care may not be readily available to the homeless population, one must look at American health care in general. In "U.S. Health-Care System Faces Cost and Insurance Crises: Rising Costs, Growing Numbers of Uninsured and Quality Gaps Trouble World's Most Expensive Health-Care System" (The Lancet, August 2, 2003), Michael McCarthy described a system �…
In 1987 Congress passed the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (PL 100-77) to provide services to the homeless, including job training, emergency shelter, education, and health care. Title VI of the Act funds Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) programs. HCH has become the national umbrella under which most homeless health-care initiatives operate. In 1994 there were 119 HCH programs in th…
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