Homeless persons with alcohol and other drug (AOD) disorders face problems that go beyond their AOD use including poverty, subsistence and housing needs, poor social support, comorbid mental illness, poor physical health, and criminal justice system involvement. They thus commonly interact with multiple public sector service agencies in addition to the AOD treatment system. Because these public sector service agencies operate independently of one another, it has been very difficult to obtain an understanding of what this patchwork "system" of care for homeless adults with AOD disorders looks like, how much it costs, the way in which costs are distributed across different agencies, and the extent to which care is coordinated between agencies to ensure that services are being delivered in an efficient manner. This paper describes an NIAAA-funded study that is providing the first estimates of the extent to which homeless persons with AOD disorders use AOD, mental health, criminal justice, public benefit, and medical services, the costs associated with such use, the factors that predict use and cost, and the barriers to developing a more coordinated and broader cross-system response to managing care of homeless adults with AOD disorders. It describes a data set that links, at the client-level, (a) survey data collected through face-to-face interviews with 800 homeless adults in Houston and (b) a year of administrative data on their service use and associated costs that were obtained from the local health, mental health, social service and criminal justice systems.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this paper, the participant will be able to:
Keywords: Homelessness, Substance Abuse
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.