Connected, Healthy & Housed

Health Care Access

Central LA

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Emerging research now proves what The Center has known for years: that there is an undeniable link between increased social connection and improved health outcomes. In the surgeon general's 2023 advisory, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy named social isolation and loneliness - defined as having few social relationships, social roles, and infrequent social interaction - as an "urgent public health issue" and asked for the American People's immediate action (Murthy, 2023, p. 6). Loneliness leads to poor health primarily because it triggers physiological stress responses which exacerbate illness (Cacioppo, 2018). Many factors contribute to an individual's social disconnection, and the unhoused often lie at the intersection of all of these factors. For example, someone who is unemployed, has a mental health illness, lacks familial support, is sleeping on the street, and is failing to meet societal norms is four times as likely to be isolated and therefore more likely to be experiencing poor health.

The Center's Day Center and Wellness programming seeks to counteract the poor health outcomes associated with social isolation -- and the systemic stress it causes -- by providing a social infrastructure net that fosters consistent connection and creates a sense of belonging for our participants. We believe that by first connecting unhoused folks to stable and safe community, we are then more able to work on bigger goals like health care, housing and long-term mental health interventions that lead to continued success in staying healthy and housed. Recent studies cite that individuals must perceive that they have access to health care systems in order to utilize them, and that the factors that influence this perception include things such as "approachability, availability, and affordability" of health care services (Gordon, 2022, p.2). The Center uniquely provides just that - approachable, available, and free social connection groups and health care in one location, because facilitating a safe and supportive environment at the Day Center invariably increases enrollment in our On-Site Clinic given that the foundation of trust has already been laid. Our programming and On-Site Clinic address factors that inhibit health by providing accessible social groups, preventative health care, substance use supports, nutritious meal programs, medication management, linkage to housing interventions and more.

The Center envisions an equitable city where the power of community prioritizes the health, housing, and dignity of every person. We believe that by shifting our collective focus away from isolated housing interventions and towards social connectedness programs -- working in tandem with health and housing supports -- that homelessness will be a rare and brief occurrence in Los Angeles county by 2050. In the long-term, The Center aims to meet this goal by scaling-up our unique social connection-based Day Center and Wellness programming model so that the healthcare and housing success that our clients enjoy can be experienced exponentially throughout Los Angeles. In the short-term, The Center plans to connect 1,000 unhoused participants to community health supports, and to perform comprehensive Day Center program evaluation, to ensure that we are doing everything we can to improve the overall quality of life for people experiencing homelessness.

The goal of this project is to enhance Day Center and Wellness programming in order to amplify the health and social connectedness of our participants. In order to ensure that we reach our goal, we aim to: 1) hire a Community Wellness Specialist with lived experience to help in the development and implementation of a health and social connectedness survey to track participants perceptions of their social connectedness while attending our programming over the duration of the grant period, 2) link 1,000 Day Center and Wellness participants to internal and external community health supports and programs, and 3) use data from the social connectedness survey to perform comprehensive Day Center and Wellness program evaluation to ensure our programming is using evidence-based interventions and serving our participants as effectively as possible.