Wicked Problem Description:
- Homelessness remains a major public health problem in the state of Hawai’i.
- Hawai’i has a homeless population of 6,530 individuals and ranked among the top 4 states in the USA with a per capita rate of 46 homeless per 10,000 people (tied with New York).
- The human and socioeconomic costs of the homeless on Hawai’i’s health care system is substantial.
- Nearly 25% of all potentially preventable hospitalizations for diabetes or heart failure were due to unstable housing issues.
- Effective diabetes (DM) and pre-DM management programs for the homeless are sparse or non-existent.
Project Strategies:
- Our proposed project is guided by a conceptual model that bridges resilience and empowerment within the context of homelessness and DM/pre-DM self-management education.
- We propose to improve the care of DM and pre-DM for people who are homeless by building individual resilience and then at an interpersonal level by developing empowerment to enact external change.
- Our immediate goal will focus on educating homeless individuals with DM or pre-DM on empirically tested self-management programs tailored to those who are homeless.
- The CS Team will train shelter staff and other peer educators to implement the “new” DM/pre-DM self-management education program.