Homelessness is an issue that seemed to be prevail across many developed countries. In Canada, the rate of homelessness is increasing, and it no only limited to one specific group of people Currie, Greaves, Golden, & Latimer, 1999, p.
17). There are many faces that homelessness has, which are, males, females, young, old, immigrants, refugees and the borne Canadian citizens. One of many topics that homelessness is connecting to is poor health. To understand the health of a population, many researchers usually only look at the biological or genetic predispositions that make up the group. There are many other factors that is important which are the life experiences, social and economic experience. All these factors have been an important due to the role that it plays within the individual or people lives. Within the studies of social determinant of health, some of the factors that many peoples agree that have affect the individual or people health is income and the social- economic status. There are many evidences that have proved that the individual income plays a big part in determining the person health.
People who are in upper class are more likely to be more health than average or poor family. People or individual that have the lowest income are most likely to not only low life expectancy but are more likely to have illness and disease. Falling into the category of homeless population in Canada. The living condition for homeless group are both severe and unsafe. Some of things that they are expose to are the extreme weather, unhygienic living areas, and the danger of assault that they face everyday will living on the street. Due to their living condition, it also have a impact on their health, which are usually worse than normal people. The Homelessness action plans for Toronto (19990, explain homeless people are at a higher risk on infectious disease, premature death, acute illness, and chronic health problems.
Also have a higher risk of suicide, mental health problems, and drug or alcohol addiction. Their state is worsened by poor nutrition, poor hygiene, and a higher likelihood of experiencing violence or trauma on the street or in a shelter (p. 103).It is clear to see the negative for both short and long-term health consequences and the increases in the mortality rate are the direct cause for the living condition for homeless people.
But still the connection between homelessness and ill health goes much deeper. Due to the risk factor that leads many people to be homelessness are also a risk factor for ill health, an example of this is the poverty and substance abuse.As for the Canadian universal health care, many homeless group of people face many barriers just to get access for the health care services and sometimes, many homeless people are unable to access most times. Under the Canadian universal health care insurance system, it explains how all individuals are to be covered and provided regardless of their financial status. In Toronto a research study was conducted on 1169 homeless individual, and one of the result from the result explain nonfinancial barriers were persistent in keeping many homeless people from accessing health care. With the study about 17% of the participant explain how they had unmet need from the health care system.
This problem was due to the number of the non-financial barriers that the researcher identified during the study, which include the constant need for food, shelter, lack of transportation and the feeling of stigmatization (Hwang, Ueng, Chiu, Kiss, Tolomiczenko, Cowan, Levinson, & Redelmeier, 2010, p. 3). Also, due many individual being homeless, the lack of a permanent home also prevent many form obtaining a health card, which is often get in their way for making appointment and get the medical treatment they needed. Due this barrier to access the primary health care and the follow up treatment, the health care provided to homeless individual is most concentrated in emergency departments (Power, 2 2008), which are sometime the last resort for many homeless individual who are unmet health care need for progressively worsen and become life threatening because of the delay of in accessing the treatment. This is an unsuccessful method for addressing the long -term of the health issues of many homeless individual and it also costly to the Canadian health care system. Purpose of this EssayThe purpose of this essay is to address the inequality that many homeless people faced with the health care.
Some of the outline that is being present is the stronger policy that look at the barriers of the health that many homeless youths are facing. This paper will look at the both the strengths and weaknesses of the policy and the chance of the policy being implemented within the health care system of Canada. Some the thing that will be explore is are that statement of researchers in developing any final policies and it effect on of the health on homeless youths.
This paper will also highlight the action that be need for long-lasting an effective. Within Canada, the amount of people homeless are constant growth, due to this there need to be an action for reducing the growing people being homeless and action that will improve health. In the paper, some of the topic that will present will not only the policy sector, but from the other sectors as well.
