Research from UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Randall Kuhn and colleagues at UCLA and USC shows the health risk for people experiencing homelessness goes beyond challenges inherent to living without shelter.
A countywide sample of unsheltered homeless people surveyed on their mobile phones reported that police were more likely than outreach workers to be their initial contact during sweeps of homeless encampments and that they were as likely to be cited as to gain housing.
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BACKGROUND & KEY FINDINGS
In Los Angeles County, an estimated 75,000 people experience homelessness on any given night, with more than 70% of the individuals living unsheltered on the streets, in tents or makeshift shelters, or in vehicles. In 2022, nearly 1,700 people experiencing homelessness died on the streets.
High rates of food insecurity, hate incidents, and difficulties accessing health care were all at the forefront of issues that plagued Californians in 2022, according to the annual California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) data released today by FSPH's
The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is likely to kill more than 3,400 people experiencing homelessness across the United States, according to new estimates from researchers at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
One of California’s ongoing challenges that was magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic was the lack of affordable housing. Now, a report published by the Fielding School's UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) draws a strong connection between residents’ struggle to pay for housing and a lack of access to health care.
The report is based on responses to the 2021 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), which is conducted by UCLA CHPR.
In L.A. County, 256 homeless people died of COVID-related causes in a 22-month period — a rate more than twice that seen in the general population
People experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles who contract COVID are 2.35 times more likely to die than someone in the general population, according to new study by UCLA, USC, and Los Angeles County.
"About a week before her son died, Heidi Locatell begged him not to go back to living on the streets. Luke, 30, had been homeless on and off since around 2015 and struggled with addiction to meth. He had been residing in a sober living facility for nearly eight months but returned to being unhoused on Aug. 31 and relapsed. “He liked the freedom of nobody telling him what to do,” Locatell said.
People experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles who contract COVID are 2.35 times more likely to die than someone in the general population, according to new study by UCLA, USC, and Los Angeles County.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open this month, suggests that homelessness is a unique risk factor for COVID-related deaths and that the likely cause is the vulnerability brought on by accelerated aging among the homeless, the researchers said.
UCLA is launching the Initiative to Study Hate, an ambitious social impact project that brings together a broad consortium of scholars to understand and ultimately mitigate hate in its multiple forms.
Supported by a $3 million gift from an anonymous donor, researchers will undertake 23 projects this year. The three-year pilot spans topics that examine the neurobiology of hate, the impact of social media hate speech on kids, the dehumanization of unhoused individuals, racial discrimination in health care settings and more.