Giving Compass' Take:

• Carey L. Biron reports that data and doctors' experiences are leading to a better understanding of housing as a key factor in determining health. 

• How can funders work to improve the housing and health situation of Americans without stable housing situations? 

• Learn about the housing first approach to addressing homelessness. 

When Catherine Crosland sees patients in the U.S. capital, her key concern is whether they have somewhere to live.

“The biggest social determinant of health is housing status,” the doctor told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a clinic below a Washington D.C. shelter.

Being homeless, she said, “causes risks to your health, lack of access to food and hygiene, the threat of violence, depression and substance abuse”.

Crosland is the medical director for homeless outreach services at Unity Health Care, a non-profit focused on low-income communities in the capital. In that role she sees patients in clinics, on sidewalks and at encampments - and the effect a lack of housing has.

Last year, she said, one patient with several chronic medical problems lost her apartment in a fire. That forced her to move with her son to a motel housing homeless families.

Read the full article about housing as a health Issue by Carey L. Biron at Thomson Reuters Foundation.