Empowering Hawai'i's Homeless: Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes Education and Resilience Initiative

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.

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.