Grant: Fellowship - PA - Research & Knowledge Translation on Urban Housing and Health

Housing an important determinant of health; however, a quarter of Canadian seniors have a core housing need, lacking access to affordable, suitable, or adequate housing. As a result of rising housing needs, more seniors have joined the waitlist for social housing. Seniors in social housing tend to live alone in poor health, experience high rates of loneliness, and have increased risk of hospital admission and nursing home placement. Toronto Community Housing (TCH) is home to 27,000 seniors, half of whom live in seniors' designated buildings; however, there is inadequate and inconsistent delivery of services in these buildings, negatively impacting tenants' ability to age in place. To better support senior tenants, the City of Toronto has been collaborating with TCH and the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network to develop a new Integrated Service Model (ISM) to better integrate the delivery of housing and support services to senior tenants. Using an implementation science approach, the objective of this research project is to help the City of Toronto and its partners co-create and evaluate the ISM. To carry out this project, we will: a) help identify relevant stakeholders who should be involved in the implementation and evaluation of the ISM; b) employ a variety of methods (e.g., scoping review, qualitative interviews, environmental scan) to generate evidence on seniors social housing to support the policymakers; c) use consensus-building approaches to support the creation of an action plan to implement the ISM; and d) evaluate the impact of the ISM on tenancy stability and access to support services. As a result of this project, the City of Toronto will be better positioned to support senior tenant's physical, social, and housing needs. The lessons learned from this initiative will be packaged into a toolkit that other municipalities can use to develop their own social housing models for their senior residents.