View clinical trials related to Homeless Persons.
Filter by:Individuals experiencing homelessness often have complex health and social needs. This population also faces disproportionate systemic barriers to accessing health care services and social supports, such as not having primary care providers, needing to meet other competing priorities, and difficulties affording medications. These barriers contribute to discontinuities in care, poor health outcomes, and high acute healthcare utilization after hospitalization among this population. This randomized controlled trial aims to evaluate the effect of a case management intervention (the Navigator program) for individuals experiencing homelessness who have been admitted to hospital for medical conditions. This study will examine outcomes over a 180-day period after hospital discharge, including follow-up with primary care providers, acute healthcare utilization, quality of care transitions, and overall health.
Problem Statement: This proposal addresses the problem of youth not being adequately supported as they attempt to transition out of homelessness. This problem leads to frequent cycling in and out of homelessness, protracted periods of homelessness, and increased exposure to an array of serious risks to health and wellbeing. This is not just an issue of housing. While adequate housing is necessary to youth exiting homelessness it is not, in and of itself, sufficient to ensure success in sustaining housing nor flourishing as a result of housing. Objective: This proposal tests a complex, critical time intervention for youth in transition out of homelessness. This intervention, which is team-based and comprised of integrated case management, peer support, and mental health supports, has proven feasible in pilot and feasibility trials. Its objective is to stabilize housing trajectories and improve outcomes in major life domains. Specific Aims: The primary aim of this study is to determine if the provision of 1 year of the critical time intervention HOP-C can improve the outcomes of youth who have transitioned into stable housing in the past 6 months. It is hypothesized that, compared with treatment as usual, housing, employment, education, and mental health outcomes will be significantly better for youth who receive HOP-C and that these gains will be sustained. Changes in quality of life, social supports, and psychological wellbeing will be explored as secondary outcomes. Partners: This study builds on a partnership between the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (research capability, mental health service expertise) and two established Toronto service providers focusing on homeless youth populations (Covenant House - Toronto; LOFT Community Services). Study Design: This study is a single blind, randomized controlled trial comparing the outcomes of the transitional intervention described above with typical supports provided in the community. Assessments will be conducted at baseline, mid-point (6 months), post-intervention (1 year), and at 6 months follow up. Implications: From a trial design perspective, the proposed study would provide evidence supporting a rationale for future trials and wide implementation. Pending positive outcomes, this would flow into multisite trial and implementation grant applications and further collaborations with others working within Canada and elsewhere. More broadly, this line of investigation has synergy with the increasingly larger and better-organized movements towards addressing homelessness in Canada. These efforts have included At Home/Chez soi - the largest study to date of housing first and Making the Shift, an NCE-funded collaborative effort towards ending youth homelessness in Canada. Collectively, these developments (in which the applicants are substantively involved), present the opportunity for both scaling the critical time intervention proposed here and its ultimately being combined with other approaches (e.g., housing first, family reunification, support in transitions from protection and justice systems). Such systems-oriented strategies, girded by evidence, hold the greatest promise for ameliorating the problem of youth homelessness and homelessness overall in Canada.
This single-arm trial of the Diabetes Homeless Medication Support intervention alone (n=15) will test the perception and feasibility of anticipated study procedures.
Compared to the vast amount of literature about the risk factors associated with young people entering and becoming entrenched in homelessness, much less is known about how to facilitate and sustain transitions off the streets. Current evidence indicates that while structural supports such as subsidized housing and social service providers are important, these things alone are insufficient to help young people integrate into mainstream society. Connecting these young people with an adult who exhibits the relationship-based components of mentoring that young people value most (e.g., genuine interest in their well-being and belief in their ability to succeed, a non-judgmental attitude and a willingness to listen, the provision of advice, guidance, affirmation and encouragement) may be key to helping them move forward and integrate into the mainstream. This intervention will provide 24 young people (ages 18-26) who have transitioned out of homelessness and into market rent housing within the past year with rent subsidies for 24 months. Half of the young people will be randomized to receive regular mentorship from an adult mentor, tasked with helping their mentee bridge the gap between homelessness and mainstream living. It is hypothesized that, for the primary outcome measures of community integration and self-esteem: 1. Better mean scores (community integration and self-esteem) in the participants who receive rent subsidies plus mentorship (intervention group) will be observed compared to the participants who receive rent subsidies only (control group) by the primary endpoint of 18 months of study participation. It is hypothesized that, for the secondary outcome measures of social connectedness, hope, and academic and vocational participation: 1. Better mean scores (social connectedness and hope) in the intervention group relative to participants in the control group will be observed by 18 months of study participation. 2. Participants in the intervention group will be more likely than the control group to demonstrate sustained engagement in academic and vocational activities (education, employment, and/or skills training) by 18 months of study participation. This pilot will be the first to test the impact of economic and social supports on meaningful social integration for formerly homeless young people living in market rent housing.
Many homeless Veterans with serious mental illness (SMI) enroll in the VA's Supported Housing (VASH) program but struggle to obtain and sustain housing. Social skills are an important-but underappreciated-determinant of housing outcomes for homeless adults. The investigators hypothesize that homeless Veterans with SMI who participate in a social skills training program, tailored for housing-related social skills, will obtain housing quicker, retain housing longer, and show improved mental health outcomes compared to Veterans with similar needs not participating in such a program.
The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of an internet-based contingency management program for smoking cessation in persons who are homeless. Thirty homeless smokers will be enrolled in the study. Participants will receive payment based on their own low carbon monoxide readings, which indicate being quit from smoking. Participants will be prescribed nicotine replacement (patches and either gum or lozenge)and bupropion. All participants will receive a four sessions of smoking cessation counseling, and will be trained to perform carbon monoxide monitoring with a device provided by the study. They will also be provided with a mobile phone equipped with a video camera, and will use this equipment at home to monitor their carbon monoxide . Participants will record videos of themselves taking a carbon monoxide reading and displaying the results, and will upload the videos to a secured website that is only accessible by the research team members and the participant. Payment will be based on providing carbon monoxide readings that indicate abstinence. The study is designed to address the following aims: Specific Aim 1: To evaluate whether it is feasible to use internet-based contingency management for helping smokers who are homeless stop smoking. Specific Aim 2: To evaluate how effective internet-based contingency managementis on decreasing smoking in smokers who are homeless.
"Aligning Resources to Care for Homeless Veterans" (ARCH) will study ways to best organize and deliver primary care for homeless Veterans. The investigators will assess 4 different adaptations of the PACT primary care model in a mixed methods study that includes multi-center, randomized-controlled trials of embedded peer-mentoring within different iterations of the PACT model, focus groups of study participants assessing satisfaction, treatment engagement and self-efficacy within the different care models and a cost-utility analysis to determine the most cost-efficient approach to organizing care for this population. Findings from this study will help determine optimal care approaches for reducing emergency department visits and acute hospitalizations, increasing patient satisfaction, and improving chronic disease management. Findings from this study will also substantively add to our understanding of health seeking behavior and the care of vulnerable/high-risk Veteran populations as well as clinical systems design. This project reflects a true "field-based study" to identify optimal and feasible approaches to patient care within our current VHA system. Finally, it will help inform pressing policy issues relevant to two identified T-21 priority areas: Ending Veteran Homelessness in 5 Years and Transforming to a Patient Centered Primary Care model.
The objectives of this study are to test an evidence-based model for improving primary and preventive care engagement among homeless veterans not currently receiving care and to demonstrate the additive benefit of primary care-based treatment engagement by this population.
Homelessness is a significant problem in Canada, and many homeless people will seek routine care in the Emergency Department (ED) as a result of barriers to access. There is a paucity of information in the literature concerning the attitudes of health care workers towards homeless patients in the ED setting, although there is ample reason to believe that these attitudes may be suboptimal. In the absence of formal teaching regarding issues of homelessness, medical students have been shown to develop increasingly negative attitudes towards this vulnerable population. It is therefore important to better delineate the attitudes of ED physicians towards homeless persons and to develop an emergency medicine curriculum that helps sensitize physicians to the needs of this already disadvantaged population.