Featuring Ellen Childs, PhD, from Boston University School of Public Health and Vaughan Rees, PhD, from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Build success with effective enforcement. Someone who smokes where smoking is prohibited is violating the policy. Enforcement of the smoke-free policy is similar to enforcement of other building policies, like noise or pet restrictions. Be consistent, fair, positive, and pragmatic.

Build success by helping smokers comply with the policy. Some residents who smoke may not be ready or able to stop smoking, but you can work with them to help them comply with the policy.

Build success by supporting cessation among smokers for whom a smoke-free housing policy may provide motivation to quit.

Build success by partnering with local agencies and organizations. Community partners can advise during planning, education residents during implementation, and help support cessation.

Build success by training staff on how to effectively share information about the policy and the importance of consistent enforcement.

Build Success by engaging residents. Residents can be a strong asset in planning, communication, implementation, and compliance efforts.

More than one-third of adult public housing residents in the US smoke—totaling approximately 400,000 smokers, putting other residents and staff at risk of negative health effects.

Times are changing rapidly for families—our households, work and the workforce do not look like they did just a decade ago. Challenges and barriers for parents continue to grow – skyrocketing costs of health care and child care, lack of flexibility at the workplace, and less time at home.

Under the continuing resolution (CR) that provided the funding to reopen the government for three weeks, SNAP (food stamps) now is fully funded at least through March, even if the government shuts down again on February 15.

Medicaid helps low-income seniors, children, people with disabilities, and families get needed health care. Medicaid coverage improves families’ financial security by protecting them from medical debt and helping them stay healthy for work.

A new collaboration of San Francisco Bay Area foundations and businesses is raising $540 million to tackle the region’s affordable housing crisis.

A whole host of factors — such as friends, housing and transportation — affect a person’s health and how much they need the social safety net. It’s time the government’s big health insurance programs took this reality into account, some lawmakers and policymakers are starting to argue.

The firearm, obesity, and opioid epidemics are among the most important public health crises of our time. Each epidemic has a complex etiology that challenges efforts at mitigation.

Health care in the United States is long overdue for an upheaval. The mismatch between costs, by far the highest in the world, and health outcomes, among the worst in the high-income world, has long been glaring. Perhaps the good news is that the time for such an upheaval has come.

Policymakers seek to transform the US health care system along two dimensions simultaneously: alternative payment models and new models of provider organization. This transformation is supposed to transfer risk to providers and make them more accountable for health care costs and quality.

Today, health care providers’ complaints about legal obstacles to health information exchange (HIE) may be better understood as reflecting concerns about the economic and competitive risks of information sharing.

Systematic analysis of health care complaints can improve quality and safety by providing patient-centered insights that localize issues and shed light on difficult-to-monitor problems.

This article shows how a complex systems perspective may be used to analyze the commercial determinants of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), and it explains how this can help with (1) conceptualizing the problem of NCDs and (2) developing effective policy interventions.

To explore the benefits and challenges of rapid re-housing support services, How Housing Matters asked a group of experts to weigh in.

This research brief explores how access to rental assistance affects the self-management behaviors of people with type 2 diabetes.

When plans to develop affordable housing units in San Bernadino hit a funding roadblock, Dignity Health committed a $1.2 million bridge loan to help fill the gap. But the health system didn't stop there.

Delegates at the 2018 American Medical Association Annual Meeting in Chicago adopted several policies intended to alleviate chronic homelessness and racial housing segregation

The State of Arizona’s Medicaid agency (AHCCCS) recognizes the vital importance of safe, decent and affordable housing to health.

Quality affordable housing can be a “vaccine” which prevents long-term health problems and promotes healthy, productive lives. When a family’s housing situation is unaffordable and unstable, chances to lead a healthy life dwindle rapidly.