Contact: Jahmeilah Roberson

Despite the heath issues closely associated with homelessness and poverty, the primary need for most homeless people is to survive life on the streets by finding food and shelter. Healthcare, while important, is often secondary. The lack of control over housing and diet often leads to these health problems within the homeless community and contributes to making them extremely difficult to treat and control. Homeless people often suffer from multiple illnesses where coordinating healthcare resources and obtaining health care information play the key roles in the disease management process.

The health care needs surrounding chronic diseases are a huge challenge for homeless people since medication, diet, and basic living interact in the course of disease management. The plan is to conduct a field study in a homeless health organization to
examine the barriers and needs for homeless and poverty stricken to obtain sufficient health care information and to explore opportunities to design and implement technological interventions to help both the homeless and the health care organizations to engage in more effective health care practice.

This research will directly benefit the participants in the study site through aiding in healthcare coordination practices, facilitating disease management, providing better Medicare and decreasing health information disparity. The findings will also be disseminated to the other homeless organizations and communities.

Grants: Faculty Mentor Program Fellowship Award, Cultural Diversity Grant, Intel PaPR@UCI Seed Grant