Benefits of a health advocacy intervention intended to improve self-efficacy for self-care in residents of a homeless shelter

Abstract

Despite a great need for healthcare, unhoused individuals encounter significant barriers to utilizing public healthcare systems. Given the inequities in access to healthcare, accompanied by disabilities and health risks associated with homelessness, self-efficacy for self-care is particularly critical. As a primary purpose of this article, we describe a self-care intervention (Health Advocacy Behavioral Activation), which was implemented within a long-standing participatory community action research project for homeless shelters, and report evidence of the intervention’s effectiveness in enhancing self-efficacy for self-care. Participants included 62 residents of the St. Vincent de Paul Gateway Shelter for Men (Dayton, Ohio). Shelter residents with disabilities and those without disability benefited approximately equally from the intervention and both showed statistically significant pre- to post-intervention improvements in self-efficacy for self-care. Recommendations for future research examining the effectiveness of the intervention are provided. As a secondary (supplementary) purpose, we report preliminary evidence of psychometric validation for a new instrument (Scale of Self-Efficacy for Self-Care), which was developed in service of our primary purpose (i.e., to examine the effects of intervention on self-efficacy for self-care) because a literature search did not identify an appropriate measure. Because this new instrument fills a void in the literature, we anticipate that it will be useful in practice and research, and so we delineate research recommendations for additional psychometric validation of this measure. Because of the barriers that unhoused people encounter with regard to access to healthcare in the community, self-care interventions provided (and evaluated) on-site (e.g., in homeless shelters) are necessary.

Keywords:

• Behavioral activation
• health advocacy
• homeless shelter
• participatory community action research
• people experiencing homelessness
• self-care
• self-efficacy
• self-efficacy for self-care
• unhoused individuals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Graduate Fellowship at Hanley Sustainability Institute, University of Dayton; Greater Dayton Brain Health Foundation, Dayton, Ohio; Marianist Foundation, Dayton, Ohio.