‘Access to care for the homeless needs to improve in many ways,’ Marcel Slockers summarizes. ‘There are specific arrangements for uninsured healthcare, but most healthcare workers do not know about this arrangement.
Over one in four homeless people die an unnatural death. In half of the cases, this is due to murder or suicide. Marcel Slockers’ analysis shows that this can be drastically reduced. The Plan of Approach to Social Shelter of the Rotterdam municipality offered homeless people income, housing and care on a large scale. This halved the number of murders and suicides. ‘These figures show why preventing and remedying homelessness deserves broad attention,’ the street doctor concluded during his PhD.
The brand-new doctor received many compliments from the doctoral committee for his civic engagement and activist research. Thus, his final statement during the ceremony was, “Writing a dissertation and publishing articles helps against inner turmoil. Meanwhile, the department of social health is conducting follow-up research. Marcel Slockers remains involved in this.
Read Marcel’s thesis here – Marcel Theodoor Slockers
