Thursday, volunteers spent the day gathering information in a Point-In-Time survey about Lubbock’s homeless population.
This happens annually, as a way to see the issues facing the community.
“In our community, we just want to make sure we understand what’s going on with the homeless population, and make sure that we’re accessing services appropriately, we need to bring in some kind of services or do some type of advocacy to make sure that if a service doesn’t exist, then hopefully we can get one come and help out the population,” Aida Martinez, the chair of the Point-In-Time committee with the South Plains Homeless Consortium.
Part of the survey includes questions about medical issues. Martinez said that comes through a grant with the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center.
“It’s about making sure the population knows that there are free medical services out there, and how to access them, and if they’re not accessing, why not,” Martinez said.
Volunteer and medical student David Coalson was among those helping out Thursday.
Coalson said he was part of a team of medical students who wanted to study emergency room use among the homeless population.
“We just have read some surveys and identified the fact that the homeless population tends to use the ER more than other health care solutions, other options, predominantly,” he said.
“We were curious as to why that was, and there haven’t really been studies, especially specifically in Lubbock, done on why that occurs,” Coalson added.
The volunteers would be not only walking the city, but also visiting different shelters in the city to meet as many people as possible and get as many surveys filled out Thursday, with some groups starting at 5 a.m.
“We have some issues with homelessness here, but we do make sure we address those issues appropriately. We have a lot of services that are available to the homeless population, but it’s just a matter of making sure they know how to access them,” Martinez said.