By David Pearson, CEO, Australian Alliance to End Homelessness.
In communities across Australia, it’s a tragic fact that people are dying whilst homeless every year. Health and homelessness are intrinsically linked, and international studies have shown that experiencing rough sleeping homelessness can reduce life expectancy by approximately 30 years; and that as many as one in three deaths were attributable to conditions that could have been prevented or treated.
If this wasn’t bad enough, in Australia we don’t even measure how many people are dying whilst homeless, which means we don’t know the full extent of the problem and how to address it.
We need metrics, evidence, and data to inform key decisions and determine priorities, like government policy and budget allocation. That’s why we measure things like the unemployment rate and road fatalities.
Yet, currently, there is no national system or database that measures and tracks how many people are dying whilst homeless, who they are, or where this is happening. Without this information, how are we to drive and measure change?
This article was originally published on Melbourne Zero’s Big Thinkers blog. Read the full story.
A3HN | Australian Health, Housing & Homelessness Network 