142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Home Events & Meetings Annual Meeting Schedule & Program

Online Program

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

307439
Housing and Healthcare: Successes and Challenges Facing Formerly Incarcerated Individuals

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Monday, November 17, 2014

David Pflaum, BA , Transitions Clinic, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Ronald Sanders, BA, CHW , Transitions Clinic, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Juanita Alvarado, CHW , Transitions Clinic, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Shira Shavit, MD , Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Emily Wang, MD, MAS , Department of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
Jenerius A. Aminawung, M.D, MPH , Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
Joseph Calderon, CHW , Transitions Clinic, San Francisco, CA
The Transitions Clinic Network (TCN) is a national network of primary care clinics providing high-quality healthcare and transitional support to chronically-ill patients recently released from prison. The clinics are supported by a culturally competent healthcare provider and a community health worker (CHW) who has a history of incarceration. The CHW provides a variety of services for their clients, including but not limited to healthcare navigation, medication management, and social services support.

By their own account, CHWs at Transitions Clinic report finding secure, stable housing as the most urgent social service need for their clients. Approximately 10% of incarcerated individuals report being homeless sometime during the 12 months prior to their arrest, and while estimates vary, nearly double are homeless upon release.  It’s a pressing concern for TCN CHWs because they know health outcomes and housing have been closely linked. Moreover, persons recently released from prison are at a 12 times greater risk of death within two weeks of their discharge than the general population. Many of the risk factors that contribute to this high mortality rate, including violence and depression, can be mitigated with secure, stable housing. This poster will describe the successes—like the approximately 70% of TC patients who requested housing in 2013 signed a lease by year's end—and the barriers to securing housing for this at-risk population, like exclusion based on a person’s criminal record, parole restrictions that limit where a person can live, and difficulty in securing proper identification for housing paperwork.

Learning Areas:

Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Identify and describe the successes and challenges that community health workers face when assisting to secure permanent housing for chronically-ill, formerly incarcerated individuals.

Keyword(s): Homelessness, Prisoners Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am an Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Medicine. My research focuses on promoting health equity for vulnerable populations, especially individuals with a history of incarceration, through both prison and community based interventions. I am the Co-Founder of the Transitions Clinic Network, a consortium of 13 community health centers nationwide dedicated to caring for recently released prisoners and defining best practices for the health care of individuals leaving prison.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3192.0: Caucus on Homelessness Poster Session 2