Health is more than just medications and doctors.

I think most people today realize that health is holistic. Its all encompassing and rarely (if ever) is only about medication or access to healthcare personnel. In reality, health is much more complex. Even in the United States, merely being born on the wrong side of town can have serious implications to your overall health and long term health outcomes. Even the month you were born has been proven to have an affect on your health (no lie- check it out here).

But so often in this work “health” organizations have an archaic and narrow approach to how they will support and what they consider health. Health organizations will say they can’t support sheltering work because its not “health”- and yet we know that housing insecure and homeless persons are significantly more likely to suffer from exposure, infectious diseases and other long term health problems. We know that housing insecure and homeless people are more likely to be food insecure (the nice term for hungry) and that kids living in those conditions are more likely to miss milestones, have developmental delays and suffer from acute malnutrition.

I would challenge you to think of a single entity that is not somehow related back to health. Let us give you a few examples: The internet? People without internet access are more likely to be unemployed and homeless (as stated above with health effects). Education- kids with limited education are more likely to be impacted by violence, homelessness and hunger (again see above). Clean water (this example is pretty obvious). Bad roads? Less likely to have access to healthcare. Poor electrical infrastructure- less likely to attend schools, more likely to be impoverished. Social media? Kids are more likely to suffer depression and anxiety when social media is unregulated. Literally EVERYTHING can be related back to health in one way shape or form.

And thats why GAPS looks to work with health and health adjacent programs. Because we realize that health is more than just medicine and staffing and we believe that people have a right to equitable access to healthcare. And that belief means we ultimately need to support a hollistic approach to health.