“Housing Is Health Care”: Treating Homelessness in Safety-net Hospitals

Christoph Hanssmann, Janet K. Shim, Irene H. Yen, Mark D. Fleming, Meredith Van Natta, Ariana Thompson-Lastad, Maryani Palupy Rasidjan, Nancy J. Burke

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    As medicine integrates social and structural determinants into health care, some health workers redefine housing as medical treatment. This article discusses how health workers in two U.S. urban safety-net hospitals worked with patients without stable housing. We observed ethnographically how health workers helped patients seek housing in a sharply stratified housing economy. Analyzing in-depth interviews and observations, we show how health workers: (1) understood housing as health care and navigated limits of individual care in a structurally produced housing crisis; and (2) developed and enacted practices of biomedical and sociopolitical stabilization, including eligibilizing and data-tracking work. We discuss how health workers bridged individually focused techniques of clinical care with structural critiques of stratified housing economies despite contradictions in this approach. Finally, we analyze the implications of providers’ extension of medical stabilization into social, economic, and political realms, even as they remained caught in the structural dynamics they sought to address.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)44-63
    Number of pages20
    JournalMedical Anthropology Quarterly
    Volume36
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Mar 2022

    Keywords

    • homelessness
    • hospitals
    • housing
    • inequity
    • marginalized populations

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Anthropology

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of '“Housing Is Health Care”: Treating Homelessness in Safety-net Hospitals'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this