Official insights from Public Health – Seattle & King County staff
A ten-year review of sudden and unexpected deaths among people experiencing homelessness offers a heartbreaking reminder: The median age of death was 51. That compares to an overall median age of 79 for all deaths of King County residents.
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Nearly 3,000 deaths are investigated by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office (KCMEO) every year. And for more than a decade, the Medical Examiner has partnered with the Health Care for the Homeless program to research and identify which of those people were presumed to be experiencing homelessness.
“We do this work to help the community both pay attention and remember. When people are remembered, they are treated with more dignity,” said John Gilvar, program manager for Health Care for the Homeless, which is part of Public Health—Seattle & King County.
by Rekha Ravindran, Health Care for the Homeless Network Over the past decade, Greg Francis has moved into stable housing after living unsheltered – and he still remembers vividly what it was like to live unsheltered. “It was tough,” he says. “It felt like someone else was controlling my life. So I came up with […]
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If we’re ever asked to consider that we might die someday, most of us probably hope it’s at home or doing something we love. For people experiencing homelessness in King County, 72 percent die in unfortunate public places, ranging from crawl spaces under buildings, to parked cars, to public parks. In 2017, the King County […]
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Burnout is a problem in many professions – and particularly in nursing. For National Nurses Week this year, the focus is on promoting good health for nurses themselves. Within Public Health – Seattle & King County, this fits squarely with many efforts to help people overcome the impacts of burnout and “secondary trauma” (which comes […]
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