When homeless people get released, their issues combined with living on the street will usually land them back in emergency rooms, costing hospitals like Harborview Medical Center — which operates on a thin margin — time and money.

As state and federal officials increasingly search for ways to curb rising health care costs, a decades-old idea is gaining traction: helping people with challenges that have nothing to do with medical care but everything to do with their health.

Treating opioid use disorder among homeless families can reduce hepatitis C transmission, infant drug withdrawal, and overdose, which is the leading cause of death among people experiencing homelessness.

More than a third of homeless people are part of a family, most of which are headed by women with at least one child. Homeless families are different from single homeless people, and their needs differ. But limited research focuses on these families.

People with mental health disabilities are vastly overrepresented in the population of people who experience homelessness. Of the more than 550,000 people in America who experienced homelessness on a given night in 2017, 1 in 5 had a mental illness.

We examined the influence of maternal health literacy on child participation in social welfare programs. In this cohort, 20% of the mothers had inadequate or marginal health literacy.

It adds to the growing body of evidence that addressing homelessness saves money elsewhere.

Why do some neighborhoods appear able to launch effective local improvement initiatives, while others are more hampered by fragmentation and mistrust? Why can some communities mobilize diverse constituencies to influence public policy, while others cannot?