Disaster Planning Toolkit for Homeless Veterans and their Community Providers

People experiencing homelessness are at significant risk for adverse health outcomes during disasters due to the compounding effects of chronic disease, lack of shelter, and extreme poverty. Despite this risk, chronically homeless individuals, constituting 6.8 percent of the U.S. population, are often neglected in community emergency planning, creating an urgent need for improvements in disaster care and service delivery.  Consequently, homeless individuals are likely to present a significant surge in demand to emergency rooms and other health safety net services after a disaster.  Healthcare systems and public health providers need sufficient surge capacity to fulfill their role in caring for homeless populations during disasters.  The Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are collaborating to develop a Homeless Disaster Planning Toolkit to improve the integration of homeless populations and service providers in disaster preparedness, planning, and response.

The goal of this session is to provide public health emergency planners and service providers with practical guidance, solutions and tangible resources to help them improve efforts during disasters to assist individuals experiencing homelessness.  Presenters will focus on three areas: 1) Communication and coordination; 2) Technical assistance for community-based homeless service providers; and 3) Guidance for clinical health providers on homeless disaster care.  Partnering with community service providers is essential to achieving a Whole Community approach to resilience.  Results of informal interviews with experts from communities nationwide include best practices, lessons learned, and recommendations from prior efforts to improve disaster preparedness and response.