Antigen Testing in Congregate Shelters: Process Outline and Implementation Playbook
The National Health Care for the Homeless Council collaborated with UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and Kaiser Permanente to provide guidance on COVID-19 screening in congregate shelters.
The Antigen Testing in Congregate Shelters: Process Outline and Implementation Playbook is intended to provide key strategy, planning, and operational considerations for implementing screening testing in congregate shelters to monitor, prevent, and respond to COVID-19 outbreaks using quick, inexpensive, rapid testing solutions that present an alternative to PCR-only testing.
With the use of this document, local health jurisdictions, healthcare service providers, and congregate shelters sites can coordinate to establish first-order strategic questions, operational needs (workflows, outbreak responses, staffing and resourcing needs, training considerations, etc.) and trouble-shooting processes (FAQs, testing quality control) to better protect people experiencing homelessness from the impacts of COVID-19.
Antigen Testing in Congregate Shelters: Process Outline and Implementation Playbook | March 2021
People experiencing homelessness (PEH) are at risk for infection during community spread of COVID-19. High rates of underlying chronic conditions and acute illnesses, lack of prevention guidance support, and stigma and discrimination that often disenfranchise PEH from connections to mainstream services are some of the individual and structural drivers of heightened risk for this population.
You can also view the webinar created for this playbook:
Antigen Testing in Congregate Shelters: Process Outline and Implementation Playbook – Webinar | April 23, 2021
Kaiser Permanente, UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, and The National Health Care for the Homeless Council collaborated to provide guidance on COVID-19 screening in congregate shelters.