HEALTH CARE USE FOR CHILDREN IN HOMELESS FAMILIES

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究的目标是改善无家可归家庭儿童的医疗保健和护理协调，这将导致改善这一弱势群体的健康状况。为了实现这一目标，拟议的研究将研究无家可归是否以及如何影响儿童的医疗保健使用。主要的研究目的是检查1）是否儿童的健康服务使用的变化之前，期间和之后，他们最初的无家可归的情节和2）是否成为无家可归的儿童不同于其他低收入家庭的儿童在他们的医疗保健使用之前，他们的第一个无家可归的情节，之后，是否有差异，在使用的变化周围的无家可归的情节相对于住房的儿童。拟定研究将采用基于管理数据纵向存档的回顾性队列设计。本研究的纵向设计将允许调查服务使用的时间模式，这将深入了解无家可归对儿童卫生服务利用的影响。这项研究将有额外的好处，比较儿童在无家可归的家庭与低收入住房的儿童。拟议的研究设计将提供有关儿童在无家可归之前，期间和之后的医疗保健使用情况的信息，以及低收入家庭儿童的比较组。这项研究的结果将有助于确定一组非常需要医疗保健的儿童，这将使医疗保健和无家可归的服务提供者能够利用他们有限的资源为那些需要及时，全面和综合医疗服务的人提供服务。这项研究的结果将提供有关服务的信息，以改善无家可归儿童的医疗保健使用，并加强医疗保健和无家可归服务的协调。此外，这些发现将使我们能够为未来的研究做出更有针对性和更有效的抽样决策。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this research is to improve healthcare and coordination of care among children in homeless families, which will lead to improving health outcomes in this vulnerable population. To achieve this goal, the proposed study will examine whether and how homelessness influences healthcare use of children. The main research aims are to examine 1) whether children's health service use changes before, during and after their initial homeless episode and 2) whether children who become homeless differ from other low-income housed children in their healthcare use before their first homeless episode, afterwards, and whether there are differences in the change in use around the homeless episode relative to housed children. The proposed study will use a retrospective cohort design based on a longitudinal archive of administrative data. The longitudinal design of this study will allow for the investigation of temporal patterns of service use, which will provide insight into the impact of homelessness on health service utilization among children. This study will have the added benefit of comparing children in homeless families with low-income housed children. The proposed research design will provide information on the healthcare use of children before, during, after their episodes of homelessness, as well as a comparison group of low-income housed children. Results from this study will help identify a group of children with a great need for healthcare, which will enable healthcare and homeless service providers to use their limited resources for those who need timely, comprehensive, and integrated health services. The findings of this study will provide information on services to improve healthcare use for homeless children and to strengthen the coordination of healthcare and homeless services. In addition, the findings will allow us to make more targeted and efficient sampling decisions for future studies.