Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Program Design And Clinical Operation Of Two National Va Initiatives For Homeless Mentally Ill Veterans, Robert Rosenheck, Catherine A. Leda, Peggy Gallup

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 1987, in response to reports of large numbers of veterans among America's homeless, the Department of Veterans Affairs established two new national health care initiatives, which have seen over 40,000 homeless veterans since their inception. We present here evaluation and treatment data on a sample of 14,000 of them. Because of differences in their design, the two programs vary in the degree to which they emphasize community outreach, homelessness prevention, and the provision of aftercare services to patients discharged from other VA programs. In spite of these differences, veterans treated in the two programs have similar health care problems …