A Student-Led Patient Navigation Program: Assessing the Goals of Individuals Experiencing Homelessness

Homeless populations face higher barriers to health care access. A student-led patient navigation program (PNP) was established pairing groups of trained medical students, who serve as patient navigators, together with an individual experiencing homelessness (IEH) to develop goals tailored to each IEH's needs. The purpose of this study was to collect data pertaining to the goals of IEH centered on the social determinants of health (SDH) domains.

IEH were invited to voluntarily participate in the program and patient navigators met with IEH weekly for a 12-week period to guide and connect patients with resources to accomplish the patients' goals. Manual review of each IEH's goals was performed and categorized according to SDH domains and further categorized into subdomains using qualitative content analysis.

A total of 86 goals were categorized for 19 participants, with an average of 4.5 goals per IEH. The most common goals were related to "economic stability" (n=34), followed by "health care access" (n=25), "neighborhood and built environment" (n=11), "social and community context" (n=10), and lastly "education access" (n=6). The most common goals based on subcategories were related to "housing" (n=13) and "employment and career development" (n=10).

"Economic stability" and "health care access-related" goals were the most common among IEH participants. Subcategorization analyses revealed that "obtaining identification documentation (ID)" was a common goal that did not easily fit into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC)-defined categories but provided insight into necessary services. Characterizing the goals of IEH permits the development of targeted resources to assist IEH and bridge health care accessibility gaps.