Evaluation of Housing First Initiative for Chicago Homeless With Chronic Medical Illness

Unstable Housing Clinical Trial

— CHHP  

Official title:

Evaluation of the Housing First Initiative of Chicago Housing for Health Partnership

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT00490581
• Other study ID #: 03-107B JHSH2003-107 IRB
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 2003
• Est. completion date: June 2008

Study information

• Verified date: July 2023
• Source: Cook County Health
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The study hypothesizes that early housing after hospitalization with case management integrated into the health and housing systems, will results in decreased use of costly health services (i.e., hospitalizations and Emergency Room visits) with no negative affect on health. To address this hypothesis the investigators implemented a Randomized controlled trial of 407 homeless adults with chronic medical illness in Chicago. Eligible homeless adults were enrolled during a hospitalization to intervention - Early housing with case management - or usual care - usual case management and housing options. The investigators followed the sample for 18 months with assessments at baseline, 1,3,6,9,12 and 18 months are enrollment. Study measures include Quality of Life, Health service use, Alcohol and Substance Use, housing and social and demographic characteristics.

Description:

The Chicago Housing for Health Partnership (CHHP) was developed to meet the challenge of providing housing to the most disadvantaged homeless people in the city: those with chronic illnesses who are being discharged from a hospital. The program model was community based and collaboratively created and monitored by an oversight committee composed of the leadership of all involved partner agencies. The CHHP was a group of 8 nonprofit agencies that provided supportive housing and 2 agencies that provided interim housing or respite care. Supportive housing was defined by the intervention as housing without time limits combined with services to help participants to live more stable, productive lives.

To evaluate this new service model, a prospective randomized trial was designed to examine the effect of supportive housing and intensive case management on health service utilization. The investigators enrolled homeless patients with at least 1 of 15 chronic illnesses from 2 urban hospitals that were members of the partnership and known to have large numbers of unstably housed patients. The chronic illnesses were associated with increased mortality in the homeless21 and were verified through review of physician hospital notes. This trial is the health outcomes portion of CHHP.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 407
• Est. completion date: June 2008
• Est. primary completion date: December 2007
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18 years of age or older

• English or spanish speaking

• Presence of at least one chronic medical illness

• Unstable housing

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Unstable Housing

Intervention

Other:
• case management and supportive housing
patients randomized to the study group are offerred respite care/interim housing and case management upon discharge from enrolling hospitalization. They are also offerred stable housing within 90 days of enrolling hospital discharge, with case management at all 3 stages - hospital, respite care/interim housing, and stable housing.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	John Stroger Hospital of Cook County	Chicago	Illinois

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Cook County Health	Research and Education Foundation of Michael Reese Hospital

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Hospitalized days - length of stay Emergency Room visits	All days admitted to an inpatient acute care intuition from time of enrollment to study end	18 months