Investigating Patient Quality of Life in San Francisco Homeless Health Facilities
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with the American Psychological Association, emphasize that homelessness is a public health concern (CDC, 2017; Donovan & Shinseki, 2013). Concurrently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) listed in its most recent report to Congress that San Francisco County has one of the highest rates of unhoused individuals in the nation, with roughly 6,211 people experiencing homelessness in 2018. HUD also estimates that roughly 65% of the unhoused population in the U.S. resides in physical shelters (Henry et al., 2018), many of which offer access to health services. Healthcare design research points to a number of factors that can influence patient wellbeing, one of which may be the size, in square feet, of healthcare facilities (Stichler, 2008). This qualitative thesis aims to summarize what staff members at facilities providing healthcare services to unhoused individuals in San Francisco County understand to be the salient healthcare needs of their clients, as well as to examine relationships between perceived quality of life of patients and characteristics of facilities. This research specifically seeks to assess whether the size of the facility as reflected in the square footage is associated with better or worse perceived quality of life, as reported by facility staff. Access to care was a central theme highlighted by facility staff, notably including addiction and psychological services; however, several aspects of the design of facilities were regarded as having the potential to be improved, with the availability of space particularly noted by staff at the smaller facility. The research findings emphasize that healthcare designs should aim to be both healing and efficient in order to enable patients to rapidly achieve their medical and social objectives.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 3, 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Coleman-Belin, Janet |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| Primary advisor | Barton, John |
| Advisor | Billington, Sarah |
Subjects
| Subject | healthcare |
|---|---|
| Subject | healthcare design |
| Subject | healthcare architecture |
| Subject | homeless |
| Subject | unhoused |
| Subject | design |
| Subject | architecture |
| Subject | staff |
| Subject | patient |
| Subject | health |
| Subject | human rights |
| Subject | Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| Subject | Architectural Design Program |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Coleman-Belin, Janet. (2019). Investigating Patient Quality of Life in San Francisco Homeless Health Facilities. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/yt518md9442
Collection
Undergraduate Theses, School of Engineering
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- Contact
- jccb@alumni.stanford.edu
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