To Good Health A Guide To Providing Health Care At Neighborhood Networks Centers

There have always been homeless people in the United States, but their plight has only recently stirred widespread public reaction and concern. Part of this new recognition stems from the problem's prevalence: the number of homeless individuals, while hard to pin down exactly, is rising. In light of this, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine to find out whether existing health care programs were ignoring the homeless or delivering care to them inefficiently. This book is the report prepared by a committee of experts who examined these problems through visits to city slums and impoverished rural areas, and through an analysis of papers written by leading scholars in the field.

It is hard to think of a more timely and topical major contribution than Drs. Naparstek, Biegel, Spiro, and collaborators have provided in this volume. Their penetrating, comprehensive study and field tests give us mapping toward the goal of reifying the concept of "community" as applied to human services. The book will prove invaluable to those at the policy level-legislators, planners, and administrators. It will serve as an essential reference for community workers-professional provid ers, natural helpers, and citizens as a whole. A salient ideal of New Federalism-placing governance as close to the people as practicable-seems a prophetic match with the model of Neighborhood Empowerment. As the authors point out, conventional wisdom has seemed to offer government regulation, control, and pro gram evaluation as a panacea package for improving human services. This work suggests a radically different approach; specifically, a shift to greater instrumental involvement of the richly variegated mosaic of American neighborhoods, combined with a system of excellent, high technology service agencies. Certainly, genuine efforts have been made before toward a true linkage of the community with human services. The Great Society pro grams, with their emphasis on citizen involvement and "maximum fea sible participation" established the foundation for legitimate citizen/ consumer linkage with the program process. Yet, in so many instances, the results fell far short of expectations.