Question: When the average age of death for a homeless man is 47, how do you persuade the country’s 151 Health and Wellbeing Boards to think more about the homeless.
Answer: Encourage people to sign the St Mungo’s Broadway petition for Homeless Health with an online film that poignantly brought the issue to life.
20 - Health and Wellbeing boards who’ve made a formal commitment
Our one-minute online film was based on a simple visual idea: a homeless person walking the streets – on a drip. Everywhere he goes, he is excluded from the healthcare services that are easily available to the general public. At the end of the film, viewers are asked to sign the Homeless Health Charter in order to urge local Heath and Wellbeing Boards to improve healthcare for the homeless. To drive pr, the film’s soundtrack was donated by Ben Howard. It ran across Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and the St Mungo’s Broadway website.
5 weeks after launching the ‘Homeless Health Matters’ campaign 20 Health and Wellbeing Boards have now signed St. Mungo’s Homeless Health Charter, making a formal commitment to understanding and meeting the health of homeless people in their area.