Housing and Homes

Goal: Promote healthy and safe home environments.

People’s homes can have a major impact on their health and well-being. Healthy People 2030 focuses on reducing health and safety risks in homes.

Some homes have problems like lead paint or secondhand smoke, which can cause serious health issues.1,2 Other homes aren’t accessible to people with disabilities and older adults. Both individual-level strategies and policy-level actions can help people stay safe and healthy at home.

Some people also struggle to pay for their homes. This is linked to worse mental health and an increased risk of disease.3 Policies that make housing more affordable can help improve health and reduce the risk of homelessness.

Objective Status

  • 0 Target met or exceeded
  • 3 Improving
  • 1 Little or no detectable change
  • 0 Getting worse
  • 1 Baseline only
  • 0 Developmental
  • 2 Research

Learn more about objective types

References

1.

Health Impact Project. (2017). 10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure. Retrieved from https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2017/08/hip_childhood_lead_poisoning_report.pdf [PDF - 7.8 MB]

2.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2018). The Health Consequences of Smoking — 50 Years of Progress. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/consequences-smoking-exec-summary.pdf [PDF - 2.2 MB]

3.

Keene, D.E., Cowan, S.K., & Castro Baker, A. (2015). “When You’re in a Crisis Like That, You Don’t Want People to Know”: Mortgage Strain, Stigma, and Mental Health. American Journal of Public Health, 205(5), 1008-1012.