Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #108514

Peter Connery, BA, Applied Survey Research, 55 Brennan Street, Watsonville, CA 95076, 831 728-1356, connery@appliedsurveyresearch.org

For many years, the treatment of homelessness has been both a shelter issue and an issue of physical and mental health. HUD administers programs that include continuum of care services addressing the physical and mental health needs of the homeless and the practice is coming under increasing scrutiny and attention. Currently, every year homeless coalitions across the country are required to submit detailed data to HUD about special needs populations within their homeless population. This data includes their status on mental or physical disability, dual diagnosis, domestic violence, depression, HIV/AIDS, alcohol and substance abuse. With underserved and difficult to access populations like the homeless, this data is very difficult to accurately collect due to the fact that such a large percentage of the population access no public services in any regular fashion. In California, for example, over 60% of some homeless populations do not live in shelters and many more access no services of any kind. This presents special challenges to the coalitions challenged with sending accurate data on these sub-populations and requires some new thinking about self-diagnosis and the use of peer-to-peer data collection techniques.

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