Heese, J., Renkin, W., Van den Berg, K. & Hugo, J., wrote a chapter on the challenges of facing homelessness: A practical guide to providing health services to homeless persons using community-oriented primary care. They highlight how homelessness is complex and multifactorial, as are the health issues homeless persons face. Homelessness is strongly associated with poor health. This association can be described as circular: poor health can predispose people to poor and difficult living conditions that can contribute to homelessness, and homelessness can contribute directly to poor health through physical factors such as exposure, lack of shelter or systemic and lifestyle factors and lower levels of personal safety. Homeless persons, in general, have the same baseline population risk for non-communicable diseases for people their age and socio-economic status, but are at much higher risk of mental health problems, substance use disorder, physical disability and infectious diseases such as TB, HIV and hepatitis, as well as of violence and injury (Hwang & Burns 2014; Seager & Tamane 2010). 

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