The link between housing and health is indisputable
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“No one can reach their full health potential without a safe, secure, and affordable place to live. The link between housing and health is indisputable.”
– Associate Professor Liz Sturgiss, National Centre for Healthy Ageing (NCHA) research lead and GP.
The NCHA Deep End Living Labs project: Better support for healthy ageing in homeless populations, led by Associate Professor Sturgiss, is making an impact in informing Australian health policy.
The Deep End Living Lab is part on an international network supporting inclusive health care for all and includes researchers, clinicians, and people with lived experience of housing instability.
“Our team is uncovering the perspectives of consumers, clinicians, and healthcare staff in how housing and health are linked to understand and address service gaps in healthcare delivery to people experiencing homelessness and housing instability. This work helped inform a position statement on homelessness recently released by The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP),” Associate Professor Sturgiss said.
With Australia grappling with the impact of the cost-of-living and housing crisis, the RACGP is calling for policy changes needed to support GPs working with patients experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.
As a GP, Associate Professor Sturgiss sees first-hand the impact on a patients’ health when they don’t have safe, secure, and affordable housing.
“If you haven’t got a safe place to call your home, then you really can’t build on your own personal health and wellbeing,” she told newsGP.
“Nothing else really works in your life if you don’t have a safe place to call home.”
The RACGP’s position statement calls for a ‘housing first’ approach, stating that “no person experiencing homelessness should be expected to meet health or recovery goals without first being housed”.
Research underway in the NCHA’s Deep End Living Lab project reinforces that people experiencing homelessness have less opportunity to age healthily. They have much lower life-expectancy and greater rates of chronic disease than the rest of the community. This important project is working to deliver a scalable intervention for screening for homelessness in healthcare settings, and to deliver a priority setting framework across Victoria at the intersection of health, ageing and homelessness.
Associate Professor Sturgiss, also the co-founder of the RACGP Specific Interest Group for Poverty and Health that initiated the RACGP’s position statement, told newsGP it was important for GPs to advocate for people within vulnerable communities as they are often their first point of contact.
“I encourage GPs to ask patients about housing and financial stress, because often patients won’t offer it themselves,” she said.
“It’s really important to flag this with our patients, about if they have got a safe and secure place to live, and to know what services are available in our communities to point people in the right direction.”
By engaging with the international Deep End community – including other Deep End projects across the UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, and Japan – the NCHA team is sharing learnings from successful advocacy in policy and practice and have all created flags of solidarity and awareness.
The NCHA’s Deep End Living Lab was recently featured at the University of Glasgow's 50th anniversary celebrations of the Department of General Practice! Our Frankston flag was displayed on a tower exhibit along with an interactive presentation of our work.
Find out more about the research underway at the NCHA’s Living Labs.