Lesley Weaver
University of Oregon, OR·Social Science
People without housing in the United States face much higher risks of illness and death than housed people, across every category of health. Yet health also varies widely within this group, and the reasons are poorly understood.
- Fields
Social Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
homelessness
houselessness
health disparities
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Compare physical health and health risk factors across four groups of people experiencing houselessness—unsheltered, encampment, temporary shelter and permanent supportive housing—to find which settings drive health differences.
- Examine how physical structures and policies, such as shelters and forced relocation of encampments, affect the health of people without housing, combining lived-experience interviews with health assessments.
- Investigate how people without homes use social relationships to manage shortfalls in resources and health, and how individual, community and structural factors interact.
- Identify ways interventions for people without housing can be carried out effectively to improve health and welfare outcomes.
More about the research
This project aims to explain that variation as a whole. It looks at individual, social and structural factors, and at how these levels may interact to create specific health risks.
Why it matters
The findings could show which conditions—type of shelter, forced relocation, social support—most affect the health of people experiencing homelessness. That evidence could guide policymakers, shelter providers and housing programs in designing interventions that improve health and welfare for this vulnerable population.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Caitlin Ryus
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Explore qualitatively how non-congregate housing policies may affect mental illness among people experiencing homelessness, including a landscape analysis of how shelter and healthcare providers partner on housing needs.
Zack Almquist
University of Washington, WA·Social Science·Early-career
Estimate the size and demographics of hard-to-reach homeless populations online, using generalized network scale-up methods and network sampling with people who access the internet via smartphones, free Wi-Fi and library computers.
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build models linking the opioid epidemic and homelessness to the spread of HIV, hepatitis C and related infections among people experiencing homelessness.
The school
University of Oregon: 14 labs on PI Pages, $175M a year on research, 219 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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