Skip to main content

Homelessness

In Massachusetts, syndromic surveillance (SyS) data have been used to monitor injection drug use and acute opioid overdoses within EDs. Currently, Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) SyS captures over 90% of ED visits statewide. These real-time data contain rich free-text and coded clinical and demographic information used to categorize visits for population level public health surveillance. Other surveillance data have shown elevated rates of opioid overdose related ED visits, Emergency Medical Service incidents, and fatalities in Massachusetts from 2014-20171,2,3. Injection of illicitly consumed opioids is associated with an increased risk of infectious diseases, including HIV infection. An investigation of an HIV outbreak among persons reporting IDU identified homelessness as a social determinant for increased risk for HIV infection.

Objective: We sought to measure the burden of emergency department (ED) visits associated with injection drug use (IDU), HIV infection, and homelessness; and the intersection of homelessness with IDU and HIV infection in Massachusetts via syndromic surveillance data.

Submitted by elamb on

Homelessness in general is a major issue in the US today. The risk factors of homelessness are myriad, including inadequate income, lack of affordable housing, mental health and substance abuse issues, lack of social support, and nonadherence to treatment/follow-up appointments. Early identification of these factors from clinical documents may help detect or even predict homelessness cases, allowing adequate intervention and prevention measures.

Objective

 We demonstrate a semi-automated approach to induce and curate lexical domain knowledge for identification of evidence and risk factors for homelessness found in VA clinical documents. This domain knowledge can be used to support training and evaluation of automated methods such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems for detection and prediction of homelessness among veterans. This could serve as a proxy for public health and other surveillance involving homeless individuals. Similar methods could be used to identify other conditions of interest.

Referenced File
Submitted by Magou on
Subscribe to Homelessness