Why it matters: Advocacy and Policies to Support Healthy Communitiesafter Incarceration

Issues: This session will explain the health burden and risks the criminal justice population faces upon re-entry, describe barriers to adequate health care in the community, and explore potential community and policy antidotes.This population faces a higher burden of disease. While provision of comprehensive care and services should begin when the criminal justice population is a “captive audience” behind bars, the services must be continued when they re-enter the community. 

Description: Some of this health burden is in the form of communicable diseases like HIV, hepatitis C, and gonorrhea and some is in the form of non-communicable chronic diseases like substance abuse, mental illness, and hypertension.  Whether communicable diseases, which risk spreading to others in the community, or non-communicable, which, in addition to  harmingindividuals, risk costing taxpayers, it behooves us, as a public health community, to advocate for comprehensivehealth care for this population. 

Lessons Learned: Comprehensive health care consists of treatment of current diseases, education about disease management and harm reduction to limit complications of incurable disease, and behavior modification to prevent future disease.  Yet often, impacted communities lack resources and providers find themselves ill-equipped to address the social, emotional and physical health challenges faced by their patients. Thus criminal justice system involvement directly affects the health and well-being of this population and their communities. 

Recommendations: Advocacy, collaboration and policies to support better health outcomes among individuals returning to their communities post-incarceration are needed to address the burden of disease this population faces.