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Unhoused children suffer most from poor water accessWhile many families enjoy the comforts of living in a home, unhoused families face a much different reality. In places like Skid Row, Los Angeles, one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States, unhoused families live in cars or tents, preparing meals with bottled water, taking bucket baths and long treks to public toilets. Aria Cataño, co-founder of the homeless outreach nonprofit Water Drop LA, highlights the hardship in this story published in Prism, noting, “A lot of undocumented kids walked here all the way from Venezuela or Colombia … and for them, unfortunately, they’ve seen worse. But for American kids… grew up here who are now homeless, they’re completely traumatized. We get questions all the time: ‘When can we go back inside?’”
With 58,000 families with children experiencing homelessness in 2023 — a 16% increase from the prior year — according to the latest annual count conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, finding clean water and safe places to bathe is a constant and growing challenge. Access to basic necessities like water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is a daily struggle, and this crisis is exacerbated by the lengthy wait for affordable housing solutions.There are also numerous health issues related to poor WASH access, especially when it comes to dehydration. “Even if there are public fountains, the quality … is disgusting,” said Lourdes Johanna Avelar Portillo, a homelessness scholar at the University of California, San Francisco. Prism reports with dehydration come urinary tract infections, lethargy, and lower cognitive functioning in children.
Redbone sits in his encampment which is situated under a bridge and next to a railroad track in Riverside County, California on July 11, 2024. Credit: Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News/ CatchLight Local)
The impacts of excessive heat on unsheltered individuals in Calif.’s Inland Empire and beyondThis month alone, residents in parts of Southern California have experienced record-breaking temperatures. On July 4th, people there endured a scorching 124 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature recorded since 1893. In a region with a large logistics workforce and a growing homeless population, such extreme heat poses significant risks, and even death. “I manage to just deal with it,” says Redbone, a 54-year-old individual who has lived on the streets for the past 13 years, in an interview with Aryana Noroozi of Black Voice News. He stresses that the most important thing for an unsheltered person facing such extreme weather is to understand when to fight the wind and the sun.
Redbone is among more than 2,441 homeless individuals in Riverside County, California, according to a recent survey. Redbone, who prefers to be identified by his nickname, receives healthcare from a street medicine team due to his chronic pain and other health issues. His physician assistant, Cerafice, also spoke with Black Voice News about the exacerbated challenges for the unhoused surviving extreme heat. He added that the group may lack the awareness and resources to properly cool themselves and manage pre-existing health conditions.
A 2019 report from the California Policy Lab sheds light on how health challenges significantly contribute to homelessness. The report highlighted that 50% of unsheltered adults experience both physical and mental health conditions at a rate 25 times higher than that of the sheltered population.
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Credit: Bahare Khodabande (Photo provided to Haitian Times by the Haitian Global Health Alliance) A call for unified public health efforts on HispaniolaFor the Haitian Times, global public health scientist Willy Dunbar, MD, PhD, sheds light on Haiti's resilience in addressing various epidemics, including the United Nations-linked cholera outbreak that killed thousands of Haitians in the 2010s, and the call to unify public health concerns on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which contains both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Highlighting a report titled "Kenya, Haiti, and Dominican Public Health" authored by Dr. Robert Paulino Ramirez, Dunbar raises this issue in the wake of Kenyan police troops descending on Haiti in a UN-backed mission to tackle gang violence on the island.“Haiti has followed a path of crisis that now calls on the international community to repeat the same actions, this time led by the Republic of Kenya. With the arrival of 400 Kenyan soldiers in Haiti, the question arises: Are we facing the possibility of new health events emerging?”
Over the years, the Haitian government has collaborated with international organizations, such as the Centers for Disease Control and USAID, to mitigate the cholera outbreak. The Haitian Times reports that from 2010 to 2019, Haiti recorded over 820,000 cholera cases, with nearly 10,000 deaths. However, with intensive interventions, including establishing Cholera Treatment Centers, widespread vaccination campaigns, and improvements in WASH infrastructure, the government has dramatically reduced cases. By 2019, Haiti had not reported a single cholera case.
Regarding both nations on Hispaniola, the public health scientist states that the Dominican Republic is equally responsible for maintaining public health defenses on the island and in the Caribbean, as an influx of tourists enter the Dominican Republic each year, posing significant risks to public health in both nations."The health security of Hispaniola cannot be achieved through isolationist policies or by placing blame. Instead, a unified approach is essential," he writes.
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Black women are nearly three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as white women. For Black Maternal Mental Health Week, registered nurse Gina Arias advocates for passing the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, a comprehensive package of bills that has the potential to fund significant investments in community-based programs addressing equity issues in maternal health →
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