Addressing Chronic Disease Within Supportive Housing Programs

Background: Tenants of supportive housing have a high burden of chronic health conditions.

Objectives: To examine the feasibility of developing a tenant-involved health promotion initiative within a “housing first” agency using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework.

Methods: Qualitative analyses of nine research capacity-building group meetings and fifteen individual pre- and post-interviews with those who completed a chronic disease self-management program, resulting in the development of several themes.

Results: Tenants of supportive housing successfully partnered with health care providers to implement a chronic disease self-management program, noting that “health care becomes ‘relevant’ with housing.”

Conclusions: Supportive housing organizations are well-situated to implement health promotion initiatives. Such publicly subsidized housing that is accompanied by comprehensive supports must also include self-management training to help people overcome both internal and external barriers to addressing chronic health needs.