Behavioral Health: All Related Resources

California passed the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act in 2022 to provide behavioral health and housing services to individuals with psychotic spectrum and schizophrenia disorders who are deemed unable to care for themselves. This policy brief from the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UCSF and the California Policy Lab uses anonymized data to estimate how many San Franciscans in a database of individuals who have contact with the urgent and emergent care system may be eligible for referral to CARE Court and describe their service needs.

Over 70% of people experiencing homelessness report current tobacco use, compared to 14% in the general population. One of the structural barriers that hinder cessation attempts among people experiencing homelessness is inadequate access to health care and other smoking cessation services. Researchers in this study aimed to explore tobacco use behaviors and factors influencing acceptability of engaging in a clinical trials. Researchers found that participants had attempted to quit smoking, and were interested in engaging in clinical trials as a method to quit smoking.

Formerly chronically homeless adults who live in permanent supportive housing (PSH) have a high prevalence of smoking. Smoke-free policies and smoking cessation services are among the most effective tobacco control interventions, but these policies are uncommon in PSH. Researchers outline a protocol for a cluster-randomized wait-list controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of the same smoke-free home intervention on the primary outcome of voluntary adoption of a smoke-free home.

People with multiple, complex health and housing needs frequently receive fragmented care because the providing systems operate independently. The California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative worked with partners in San Francisco’s public health and criminal legal systems to link together ten years of data from the physical health, behavioral health, housing, and criminal legal sectors.