HOMELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The Ideal health System to serve the homeless women and children with chronic illnes using the UCLA Health Center at the Union Rescue Mission as the model



The Ideal health System to serve the homeless women and children with chronic illnes using the UCLA Health Center at the Union Rescue Mission as the model

The popular perception that homeless people are men with substance abuse problems is no longer accurate. Union Rescue Mission, one of the largest service providers for the homeless in the downtown Skid Row area of Los Angeles, has experienced dramatic growth in the number of women and children they serve. Faced with the shift in population, Union Rescue Mission approached the Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) at the University of Southern California to engage in a feasibility study to inform its strategic plan for addressing the issue of homeless women and children. A summary of findings from this study is available at www.usc.edu/crcc. CRCC engaged faculty members and doctoral students at USC and other institutions, including UCLA, to conduct research(Bayona, 1994)(Agius, 1998).

Walking down the Westwood Boulevard from the commercial building where I work as a quality improvement coordinator at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical center, just one block south of the medical center; I come across five to 10 homeless people within the two-block vicinity from the medical center on a daily basis. I thought maybe it was just a cluster of homeless people gather in the Westwood area and there should not be a lot of homeless people in the United States, the leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.

As I started to search for information about the homeless issue in the United States, It strikes me with disbelieve to learn that, according to Pitts et al, it was reported in their 2006 survey, large numbers of homeless individuals are found in the United States, Canada, and throughout the world.

According to the 2007 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count sponsored by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the overall homeless population of the Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC) at a given point in time is estimated to be 68,608 people. Approximately 57,166 were unsheltered, and 11,442 people were living in either emergency shelter or transitional housing programs at the time of the census. The 2007 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count estimated 141,737 persons who were homeless some time during the year. Based on the 2006 population estimates from the State of California Department of Finance, this annual estimate of homelessness represents approximately 1.5% of Los Angeles County's total population of 9,388,583people (the Los Angeles County general population estimate does not include the cities of Glendale, Long Beach, and Pasadena)(Beaglehole, 1998)(Bayona, 1994).

Reading about the 2007 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, homeless people suffer from many serious threats to their health, including an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Common medical conditions in this population include epilepsy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, diabetes and musculoskeletal ...