• Homelessness can adopt many forms, such as individuals living on the streets, in shelters or encampments, or in transitional housing. (https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/homelessness-and-health.pdf)
• Housing was declared a fundamental human right by the United Nations in 1991.
• On a single night in 2019, roughly 568,000 people were experiencing homeless in the United States. (The 2019 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress. (www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2019-AHAR-Part-1.pdf)
• Homelessness in the U.S. is recognized as a public health issue by the American Public Health Association.
• Numerous structural factors underlie homelessness, including housing instability, poverty, unemployment, and incarceration. When combined with various social and environmental risk factors, the homeless population has disproportionately poor health outcomes. (Elder, J., & King, B. (2019). “Housing and Homelessness as a Public Health Issue.” Medical Care, 57(6), 401–405. doi: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000001115)

Initiatives from the local to international levels are critical to achieving health equity. These include advocacy efforts, service delivery and outreach, homelessness prevention programs, interventions to improve employment opportunities and housing stability, and educational initiatives to spread awareness about homelessness and to develop systems to help them.

• Hearts for the Homeless is launching a new initiative centered on writing literature reviews on homelessness. One project includes compiling literature into a journal that we hope to publish.
• We are working on a research project regarding the homeless population and cardiovascular health using the blood pressure readings that we take at our screenings.
• We would love to have you on our team! Scroll down to get involved.

This number gives the approximate amount of people in the world that are homeless.

In 2018, several members of Hearts for the Homeless International, including our President, Andrew Aboujaoude, and National External Affairs Officer, Mary Cobty, were co-authors in a study published in 2020, titled “Risk Factors and Public Assistance Role in Hypertension among Homeless Population: A Cohort Study.” This study highlights the major risk factors of hypertension among the homeless community in the Orlando metropolitan area such as financial assistance, duration of homelessness, etc., in order to provide solutions and to modify associated risk factors. This is because cardiovascular complications are one of the leading causes of death among homeless individuals. The overall prevalence of hypertension among participants was found to be 52% (87 out of 167), which is higher than the national average. Homeless individuals who were homeless for greater than a year were more likely to have hypertension, whereas hypertension was less prevalent in those who were homeless for less than a year. Additionally, those who received financial assistance had a lower rate of hypertension than those who did not.

For more information, the research study may be accessed using the following link: https://biomedres.us/pdfs/BJSTR.MS.ID.004099.pdf

Reference: Naser E., Aboujaoude A., Lenkiu L., Carvel J., Cobty M., Avais M., Al-Deen Hassouneh S., Qasem A., Naser S. A. (January 21, 2020). Risk Factors and Public Assistance Role in Hypertension among Homeless Population: A Cohort Study. Biomed J Sci & Tech Res, 24(4), 18510-18514. DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2020.24.004099