This paper is one of a series of six commissioned by Pathway to inform policy development through the NHS 10-year plan and the cross-Government homelessness strategy.
Drawing on the expertise of our Pathway Fellows, other experts, and our colleagues with lived experience of homelessness, each paper identifies actionable policies for change. All the papers underline the importance of a preventative approach, prioritising action which stops social and economic disadvantage leading to exclusion, collapsing health and early mortality.
You can watch the launch of our Policy Papers for Inclusion Health here.
Tackling extreme health inequalities using health data – The case for the development of routine housing status recording
The Government has made the reduction of health inequalities a priority, but people in inclusion health groups who face extreme health inequalities are often invisible in health care data.
These people are therefore not only invisible to commissioners planning services and national decision makers making policy, but also to those holding services to account for improving outcomes for the sickest people in society.
In this paper Samantha Dorney-Smith explains how the recording of housing status is key to identifying people in inclusion health groups and calls on the Government to introduce a new system for recording housing status to ensure people in inclusion health groups count in healthcare.
About the author
Samantha Dorney-Smith is a Clinical Research Associate at UCL and Pathway Fellow. She previously worked as the Lead Nurse for Pathway for eight years and before that led a large inclusion health service in the community across South London.
Samantha has a particular interest in inclusion health data. She has considerable experience of health systems and coding and created a homeless and inclusion health template in EMIS which has since been replicated in SystmOne and is well used across the country. She is passionate about the key role of health data in delivering quality improvement.