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RESEARCH AND PRACTICE |
Bella Schanzer is with the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Center for Homelessness Prevention Studies, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY. At the time of the study, Boanerges Dominguez was with the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health. Patrick E. Shrout is with the Department of Psychology, New York University, New York. Carol L. M. Caton is with the Center for Homelessness Prevention Studies, the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, and the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Bella Schanzer, MD, MPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 600 W 168th St, New York, NY 10032. (e-mail: bms12{at}columbia.edu).
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ABSTRACT |
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Objectives. Little is known about the health status of those who are newly homeless. We sought to describe the health status and health care use of new clients of homeless shelters and observe changes in these health indicators over the study period.
Methods. We conducted a longitudinal study of 445 individuals from their entry into the homeless shelter system through the subsequent 18 months.
Results. Disease was prevalent in the newly homeless. This population accessed health care services at high rates in the year before becoming homeless. Significant improvements in health status were seen over the study period as well as a significant increase in the number who were insured.
Conclusion. Newly homeless persons struggle under the combined burdens of residential instability and significant levels of physical disease and mental illness, but many experience some improvements in their health status and access to care during their time in the homeless shelter system.
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INTRODUCTION |
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A similar literature exists relating poor health status to lower socioeconomic level18–21 as well as racial and ethnic categories.22 The relation has been reported for dental care,23 cancer screening,24 life expectancy,25 the effect of smoking on health,26 mortality rates after elective surgery,27 and many other aspects of physical health and health outcomes. A similar relation has been documented between lower socioeconomic status and poorer mental health.28–30
The literature highlights the effect that socioeconomic status has on health status, regardless of housing status. Given the additional stress of homelessness, we questioned whether homelessness would further negatively affect health status and use of the health care system.
A few studies have followed homeless individuals longitudinally. These studies confirmed the potentially negative effect homelessness can have on mortality, physical health, mental well-being, and substance use.31–36 However, these studies focused on either chronically homeless persons or those living on the street, with the studies beginning after the participants were already homeless. We investigated the effect of being homeless on individuals who were new to homelessness and whether their course—finding housing or remaining homeless—made a difference. In addition, we focused on homeless shelter residents, whose experience of homelessness was most likely different from that of homeless persons living on the street.
We chose to study newly homeless individuals from their entry into the New York City homeless shelter system until 18 months later to examine the effect of the longitudinal course of homelessness on health status and health care use. Our data describe health changes that occur over the course of early homelessness experienced in shelters.
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METHODS |
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The interviewers engaged in assertive procedures to minimize loss to follow-up. These included consistency of interviewing staff and frequent contacts over the follow-up period to note any change in residence. Attempts to maintain contact were made even in the event that participants left the shelter system. The respondents also received a product voucher or a monetary incentive for each completed follow-up interview. The study was approved by the Columbia University Medical Center institutional review board.
Measures
We used the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), nonpatient edition, in a structured assessment designed to yield current or lifetime psychiatric diagnoses according to DSM-IV criteria.37 It has been shown to have good test–retest reliability for both Axis I and antisocial personality disorder.37,38 Master’s-level clinicians trained in the administration of the assessment battery conducted all of the structured interviews and other study procedures.
Demographic data and information on living arrangements, homelessness history, current housing status, education, employment, marital status, citizenship, and the respondents’ reports of medical illnesses and insurance status were obtained with the Community Care Schedule.39
Health data was also collected through the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form Health Survey,40 which evaluates general physical and mental health status as well as health perceptions. It has been shown to have good correlation to other health-rating scales. Health ratings were done at baseline, 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months.
The data were analyzed in a stepwise manner with SPSS version 13.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, Ill). Frequencies of reported baseline health problems were determined and compared with those reported for the general population in the literature. Chi-square analysis was performed to identify significant differences in reported health status between those who found housing and those who remained homeless at 18 months. McNemar tests were used to discover significant changes over time.
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RESULTS |
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Demographics
The baseline sample was slightly more than half male (n = 225). The majority of participants belonged to minority groups (n = 401), with a mean age of 36.9 years and a mean duration in New York City of 23.6 years before becoming homeless. Two thirds (n = 290) of the respondents were African American, one fifth (n = 91) Hispanic, and just under 15% (n = 64) White or other ethnicities. More than 85% (n = 385) of the participants were unemployed at the time of their entry into the shelter system. The median length of time homeless was 190 days. At 18 months, 265 participants had housing and 86 remained homeless.
At entry into the homeless shelter system, 60% (n = 212) of the participants who remained in the study at 18 months had at least 1 medical complaint. The respondents reported a high rate of medical diseases: 17% of the respondents had hypertension, 6% diabetes mellitus, and 17% asthma (Table 1
). Mental health disorders were more prevalent: one third of the respondents had been diagnosed with major depression and more than one half with a substance use disorder (Table 1). We found significant rates of co-morbidity between physical medical complaints and major depression (P < .005) and between physical medical complaints and substance use disorders (P < .001).
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Health Status and Health Care Use
The participants’ health status was followed over the study period to determine the effects of homelessness on their physical health. Some aspects of the participants’ health status showed improvement, and none significantly worsened. More positive change was noted in the group that found housing than in the group that remained homeless. Among the whole group, there were statistically significant decreases in the number of visual (P < .001), dental (P < .001), and podiatric complaints (P < .005). The group that found housing also had a statistically significant decrease in the reported rates of high blood pressure (P < .05). The group that remained homeless had a statistically significant reduction in their number of visual (P < .001) and dental (P < .005) complaints (Table 3).
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Nearly 80% of the respondents sought out medical treatment in the year before becoming homeless. Slightly more than one third of the group made a visit to the emergency department, and a similar number took at least 1 nonpsychotropic prescription medication in the year before becoming homeless. More than 40% of the participants did not have any type of health insurance (Table 4). There was no association between employment status and health insurance status.
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DISCUSSION |
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The results also highlight the active nature of these individuals’ medical and psychiatric problems before becoming homeless. The vast majority sought out treatment of some sort in the year before entering the homeless shelter system, and more than one third were taking prescription medication. They were coping with diseases when they became homeless and were reaching out to the medical community for assistance. Despite some improvement in their health status, however, this population continued to heavily use the medical system—in particular, emergency departments—while homeless and after finding housing.
Persons at risk of becoming homeless also stressed the health care system as they sought help for primary care medical and psychiatric problems in emergency departments instead of in outpatient clinics or private offices. They overused an already overcrowded and expensive part of health delivery facilities. A survey of hospital directors found that emergency departments were overcrowded in almost every state, with 10% to 30% of hospitals surveyed reporting daily overcrowding.48 The NHIS found that fewer than 1% of Americans used the emergency department as their usual source of care,49 but slightly more than one third of the newly homeless in this study reported using the emergency department for treatment. The number of uninsured respondents in this study was also larger than the roughly 25% uninsured rate found in a similarly aged US population (35–44 years) and in the US population defined as poor (earning less than $25 000) by the US Census Bureau.50
Most striking was what happened to this population over their time in the homeless shelter system and beyond. The health of these first-time homeless individuals did not significantly worsen, and certain aspects actually improved. There was also a huge surge in the numbers of individuals who became insured.
We did not ask people why they felt their health status improved, but several explanations are possible. One is a bias toward successful follow-up among those whose health improved. Although this is possible, it is not likely because the group lost to follow-up had fewer medical complaints at baseline than did the group successfully followed. Another possibility is that improvement is simply a reflection of regression to the mean over time. We are most intrigued, however, with explanations that can be related to the structure of the New York City homeless shelter system. This shelter system provides primary care and mental health services on-site in some of the shelters in the form of clinics staffed by nurse practitioners, internists, and psychiatrists. The availability of these services might explain the improvements in certain areas such as podiatric and dental problems. For many, this might have been the first time that they had ready access to primary care services outside of an emergency department, which is ill suited to address visual, dental, or podiatric complaints. It is not surprising that these complaints decreased so dramatically over the course of the study period, when the participants had access to primary care services with the ability to address these problems.
The improvement in health status included a decrease in the self-reported rate of hypertension among those who had housing at 18 months. We did not query participants about whether there were concomitant changes in lifestyle or compliance with medication upon becoming homeless. However, it is possible that with increased access to care, the participants were better able to control their blood pressure in the 18 months after becoming homeless. Although the decrease did not reach the level of significance, a trend in the same direction was seen among those who remained homeless.
The shelter system also has case workers and benefits counselors who may have aided individuals in their attempts to gain Medicaid/health insurance or other social service benefits that might have an overall positive effect on their health. The increase in insurance rates was striking. Sadly, although the income of a majority of these individuals qualified them for Medicaid before they entered the homeless shelter system, they may not have had the knowledge or ability to attain it. Once they had the assistance of on-site benefits counselors, they were able to become insured in great numbers.
Although living in a homeless shelter renders an individual homeless by definition, the New York City shelter system ensures that a person placed into a particular shelter remains in that shelter until he or she leaves the shelter system. This might have provided sufficient residential stability to allow individuals to focus on more long-standing physical problems that they could not address while struggling with housing instability.
Surprisingly, despite some evident improvements in aspects of their physical health, the participants’ subjective sense of their health status, as measured by the health survey of the Medical Outcomes Study, did not change. We can only hypothesize about the reason. Even at baseline, the participants’ scores were no different from norms seen in the general population of similarly aged individuals. It is possible that the survey questions did not adequately address the health concerns of this population, and thus, no change in the scores was evident when their health status improved. It is also possible that their homeless state prevented the participants from fully appreciating the physical health improvements they had achieved, and their health survey scores therefore failed to increase.
Limitations
This study had several limitations. The participants’ medical status at all time points was assessed via self-report because the study interviewers did not have access to any form of medical records. The participants’ complaints and reports of disease were not corroborated with a physical examination. Although this is a significant limitation, the rates were compared with the NHIS, which also relied on self-reporting. Also, the group lost to follow-up may not be represented by these findings because their gender makeup and baseline overall health status differed from those of the group for whom there was complete follow-up data. Finally, these findings specifically apply to individuals who were homeless for the first time and who entered into the New York City shelter system; they cannot necessarily be generalized to homeless individuals in shelters in other cities or to homeless individuals living on the street, who may not have access to the same level of medical and psychiatric care as that provided in the New York City shelter system.
Conclusions
Historically, policymakers have attempted to treat the medical or psychiatric problems of the homeless by bringing services to the shelters—whether in the form of primary care nurses on-site or tuberculosis treatment units or specialized mental health shelters for those with severe psychiatric illness.51 Clearly, these services play an important role in improving the overall health status of individuals using the shelter system and may explain the results of this study. However, many individuals who are newly homeless were quite ill before becoming homeless and might have benefited equally from receiving attention for their health issues before they entered the shelter system. People should not have to enter a homeless shelter to experience an improvement in their health status and increased access to health insurance.
The individuals in our study represent a population struggling under the combined burdens of residential instability, poor social networks, and significant levels of physical and mental health disease. Over the past few years, a potential response to the health problems of this population has arisen in the form of innovative projects that focus on neighborhood interventions that promote prevention of disease among individuals who are most at risk of becoming homeless—before losing their housing.9 It is unclear whether additional primary care services in the community would have prevented homelessness or improved the health status of our respondents. However, if people living with poverty have available medical and social services in the community and are able to make use of them, they may be able to improve their health status and to avoid homelessness.
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Acknowledgments |
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Presented in part at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November 2004.
The authors are indebted to Ingrid Ramirez, Milagros Ventura, and Eustace Hsu for their assistance with data processing.
Human Participant Protection
This study was approved by the institutional review board of the Columbia University Medical Center.
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Footnotes |
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Contributors
B. Schanzer drafted the article and conducted the primary data analysis. B. Dominguez and P.E. Shrout assisted in the data analysis. C. L. M. Caton originated and supervised all aspects of the study. All the authors participated in reviewing and drafting the article.
Accepted for publication March 7, 2006.
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References |
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