HOMELESSNESS AND HEALTH 1
Health Issues Among Homeless
Subject: Sociology
Columbia University
The general perception is that homeless people are hobos, bums and vagabonds,
who deliberately live unhealthy lives. I found it to be a false perception during my
research. The modern homeless person may be a single mother who faced domestic abuse
or a teen who was kicked out by his or her alcoholic father or a person whose skills have
become redundant in new market. Initially I had found out that most of them were
suffering from diseases and many did not have access to public healthcare. This is what
also drove me into this research as I wondered whether these people had access or not to
public healthcare.
As I lost every bit of negative attitude toward homeless people, I do think that my
study would help to change popular opinion about people suffering from homelessness.
This is also important because if people are sympathetic to homeless people cause then
only governments would take necessary and desired actions critical to their wellbeing.
One of the major issues being faced by them was that they could not avail public
healthcare because of lack of address documents. Governments can do policy changes but
that would require public awareness and thereby pressure. I do hope my study can help in
a small way to achieve change of attitude among public toward homeless people. I do
want to wake up masses toward our moral duty as a human being and a Christian.
I did further research to seek remedial measures after identifying and diagnosing
the problem. It is often said among research quarters that proper identification of a
