UniHealth Foundation has partnered with Cedars-Sinai and Providence Southern California to commit $15 million in grantmaking and program-related investments over two years to improve the healthcare of those experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County. The funding initiative, called Pathway to Health and Home, identifies collaborations and partnerships between healthcare and housing providers to better integrate clinical services into interim and supportive housing units. The collaborative philanthropic effort aims to improve health outcomes and reduce the influx of people experiencing homelessness into hospitals and emergency rooms.

Pathway to Health and Home evolved from longstanding efforts to address critical service gaps for patients discharged from the hospital but still require care and a place to stay and recover. For more than a decade, UniHealth Foundation has invested in programs that support people experiencing homelessness as they progress from hospital discharge to permanent housing. A wide variety of services and supports are required along the way, and UniHealth has identified many interventions that help make patients’ journey healthy and successful.

Consultation with our hospital and service provider partners led to increased investment in promising strategies that facilitate transitions from hospital to home. These include support for recuperative care, a transitional alternative to a hospital bed where a person experiencing homelessness can heal after a hospitalization or medical emergency. Increased focus on mental health needs, navigation into social services, case management, and street medicine have improved access and delivery of effective care for people experiencing homelessness.

Pathway to Health and Home builds on the previous work UniHealth has accomplished with, and learned from, its grantmaking over the past several years. In 2018, UniHealth Foundation committed to be a philanthropic leader and supporter of recuperative care work. The UniHealth Board of Directors designated $1 million over two years towards recuperative care projects. Cedars-Sinai Community Benefit decided to support this work by granting UniHealth $250,000. In 2020, this collaboration expanded again – Cedars-Sinai invested another $5 million and Providence Southern California has invested $1.2 million.

Pathway to Health and Home emphasizes three focus areas: (1) communication and collaboration, among housing and healthcare providers, payors, funders, and public agencies; (2) embedding clinical services in housing, including recuperative care housing; and (3) improving care transitions via linkage, navigation, and training with a focus on seniors/elderly. In its first year,  Pathway to Health and Home targeted the health issues of older adults falling into homelessness. Older adults are falling into homelessness at higher rates than ever before and housing facilities and staff find themselves ill-equipped to address the needs of this population. Addressing long-term, chronic care issues is a priority for the initiative. Pathway to Health and Home funding has supported programs to improve the health of patients experiencing homelessness and help the transition to permanent housing.