Feature Channels: Poverty

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A homeless individual is one who lacks fixed and reliable housing, and it is estimated that 553,000 people fit that description on any given night in the United States. A new retrospective cohort study by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center examines patterns, causes and outcomes of acute hospitalizations between 2007 and 2013 for homeless individuals and non-homeless control groups in three populous and diverse U.S. states: Florida, California and Massachusetts. Data suggest a rise in acute hospital use among homeless individuals for mental illness and substance use disorder. The results were published in the journal Medical Care on Dec. 11.

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In a study of medical records pulled from a national database, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have found that underrepresented populations are less likely than others to be eligible for hip or knee replacement surgeries because they do not meet certain rigid—and in their opinion unfairly applied—hospital requirements for surgery, such as weight, blood sugar and tobacco use limits. Such cutoffs, say the researchers, designed to lower costs and in some cases complications, deny minority and lower income groups access to treatments that would improve their quality of life.

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When households in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have an adequate number of insecticide-treated bed nets, pregnant women and children under five are the most likely family members to sleep under the ones they have, leaving men and school-aged children more exposed to malaria, new Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) research suggests.

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Two-Thirds of Women Did Not Receive Their Desired Contraception at the Six-Week Postpartum Visit, Increasing Risk of Unintended Pregnancy.

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A new study conducted by researchers at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at Notre Dame shows that emergency financial assistance for people facing homelessness not only reduces shelter entry, but also reduces criminal behavior.

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Getting a jump on a low-income child’s education can have a positive effect on social behavior even 40 years later, researchers find.

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It’s a common scenario in many emergency rooms: A man with a long history of homelessness and schizophrenia reports hallucinations and thoughts of suicide. Should the medical team admit him for hospitalization or treat him with antipsychotic drugs and release him from the ER? Lessons learned from this experience are the focus of the first article in a series of case studies that begins Nov. 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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New poverty dashboard developed by professors James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame and Bruce Meyer of the the University of Chicago visualizes more accurate overview of poverty.

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As small Iowa towns continue to lose population, a strong social infrastructure – rather than economic or physical factors – determines whether residents report greater quality of life, according to new research out of Iowa State University.

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Researchers are investigating whether infants born into poverty have stronger inflammatory responses, predisposing them to chronic disease during their lives.

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Simon Haeder and Sara Anderson have been selected to participate in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program.

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New Algorithm Can Improve Outcomes in Assigning Housing to Homeless Youth and Change Housing Policy

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Centennial Professor of Economics Philip Jefferson offers a systematic examination of the layers and roots of poverty and argues for the need to understand poverty.

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Being a good neighbor can have a powerful effect on residents’ attitudes and behaviors even for those living in highly disadvantaged communities, according to the results of a new study by a University at Buffalo sociologist.

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Children who grow up in poverty or who are otherwise socially and economically disadvantaged may be more likely in old age to score lower than others on tests of cognitive skills, according to a study published in the September 26, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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A website packed with resources, curated content and checklists for journalists has been redesigned and relaunched by Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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The U.S. Census Bureau will release its 2017 statistics on poverty this week. The University of Michigan has experts available to discuss the latest findings compared to 2016 rates of 12.7 percent (40.6 million people) for poverty.

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FINDINGS High poverty rates, low education and lack of insurance are all social determinants that are expected to lead to high mortality rates and negative health outcomes. Despite a 62 percent minority population with these characteristics in California, the state’s health profile was significantly better than the nation’s as a whole.

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Kids who faced daunting barriers to success in the classroom had a clear message for University at Buffalo researchers who asked them as young adults to look back on their experiences with maltreatment, homelessness and their time in school: Adults can do better. “It’s as though they’re asking us as adults not to give up on them, to stick with them,” says Annette Semanchin Jones, an assistant professor in UB’s School of Social Work.

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Researchers from the George Washington University published an article in Trends in Parasitology outlining their lessons learned while creating vaccine candidates for hookworm and schistosomiasis.