The Homeless Terminally Ill and Hospice & Palliative Care

The homeless are a disenfranchised, diverse societal ecosystem comprised of everyone from single men and women to nuclear family units.1 Estimates suggest that approximately 7.4 percent of persons living in the United States have been homeless at some time during their lives—with homelessness defined as sleeping in shelters, on the street, in abandoned buildings, in cars, or in bus and train stations.2 How many of these persons are terminally ill is unknown, although terminal illness is a nondiscriminatory complex of maladies that affects all socioeconomic levels, including indigent and homeless persons (abstract from the article)

Publication Date: 
1998
Pages: 
196
Volume: 
15
Issue: 
4
Journal Name: 
American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine