Student Research Ideas
If you are interested in learning more about homelessness and contributing new knowledge to the field, here are some ideas you may want to consider for an Honour’s or Master’s thesis.
- Shelter-based health care is one strategy we commonly use to help increase access for people experiencing homelessness, but as people become stably housed they may not want to return to a shelter to see their Physician or Nurse Practitioner. As community-based research, reach out to a local organization in your community that provides health services in a homelessness organization and conduct an ethnographic analysis of their transitional planning. Consider if or how they transition patients into mainstream health care, what formal policies and processes they have to guide the work, and what gaps exist in their approach that could be addressed through recommendations.
- There are many sub-populations that experience homelessness at higher rates, such as LGBTQ2S+ individuals as explained by Dr. Abramovich. Identify a sub-population, such as women, youth, seniors, veterans, persons with disabilities and/or new Canadians, and conduct a scoping review to identify what literature exists on their unique health care needs. Create a set of recommendations on how primary care services could be improved for that particular sub-population.
- The city of Toronto collects data on the number of people who have died while experiencing visible forms homelessness, such as residing in shelters (Homeless Deaths | Tableau Public). Download this data set and conduct a multi-variate analysis of trends over time. Alternatively, look to see if similar data exists in your community or if it could be created using other publicly available data. For instance, use public death records and filter by whether the person is identified as having ‘no fixed address.’ What trends can you find in your community? What does the data tell us about homelessness and mortality rates?
