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Health Care for the Homeless Program Marks 20th Anniversary
Close to 1,000 participants gathered in Washington last month at the National Health Care for the Homeless Conference to mark what one called a “bittersweet” 20th anniversary of HRSA's Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) program.
“With HRSA's support, each year we have provided excellent, accessible care to about three-quarters of a million dispossessed and gravely ill clients,” said John N. Lozier, executive director of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. “But the crisis of mass homelessness continues.”
HRSA became involved in health care for the homeless in 1988, when it awarded its first HCH grants a year after Congress passed the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act to help people who are homeless get emergency food, shelter and medical care. Those initial grants helped 109 community-based organizations and local government entities deliver care to 350,000 individuals. Today, HRSA invests nearly $176 million in 200 HCH grantees that serve more than 700,000 people each year.
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HRSA Administrator Elizabeth M. Duke addresses the National Health Care for the Homeless Conference.
Photo courtesy of Ansell Horn |
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HRSA Administrator Betty Duke delivered a luncheon address on the first day of the National HCH Conference, sharing updates on the President's Health Center and High Poverty County Initiatives and on the agency's quality initiative and health information technology activities. She reiterated HRSA's commitment to providing access to high-quality health care for homeless individuals.
“I believe health care for the poor doesn't mean poor health care,” she told the audience. “I know that the delivery of comprehensive, integrated care is a special focus of HCH grantees because your patients often need not just medical care, they need mental health and substance abuse treatment, housing and more. In many ways, the care you provide is a model of health care for all health centers.”
Two days before she addressed the National HCH Conference, Dr. Duke traveled to Orlando to award two health center grants to the local HCH grantee, Health Care Center for the Homeless. The grants, which totaled more than $1.1 million, will allow the Center to expand services to 3,000 more people than they currently treat. The first grant – worth almost half a million dollars – will be used to hire more staff and extend clinic hours into the evenings and weekends. The second – a New Access Point grant worth $625,000 – will be used to operate a mobile medical unit staffed by nurse practitioners, a licensed clinical social worker and medical assistants.
Dr. Duke shared the good news of her Orlando visit with the conference audience as she saluted HCCH's Chief Executive Officer Bakari Burns, who was present at the luncheon.
“It's not every day that grantees get a chance to share their wonderful work directly with the HRSA Administrator,” Burns told Inside HRSA . “Dr. Duke's interaction with attendees during her visit to our facility in Orlando was very inspirational. My staff left the event re-energized and proud of the hard work they do day in and day out to help our homeless community members.”
Lozier also felt optimism at the program's 20-year mark. The Washington conference, he said, had provided HCH program operators and providers “an opportunity for sober reflection on what must be done, for teaching and learning the special skills required for their work, and for generating peer support” among clinicians, consumers, administrators, and Federal officials.
“We left the conference emboldened and strengthened for the tasks that remain,” he concluded. |
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Consolidated Health Centers...
In 1996, Congress passed the Health Centers Consolidation Act, which joined the HCH program to community, migrant, and public housing primary health care programs under a single authority called the Consolidated Health Centers Program. |
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HRSA Administrator Duke and Bakari Burns, chief executive officer of Orlando's Health Care Center for the Homeless. |
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Printer-friendly July 2007 Inside HRSA (Acrobat/PDF)
