2018 FUSE Initiative
Hamilton County Frequent User (FUSE) Initiative
UTC hosted a brown-bag session with the organizers of the FUSE Initiative in February 2018 to discuss opportunities for research partnerships. Like many communities, Hamilton County struggles with a variety of issues related to individuals with mental illnesses who are in the criminal justice system. An estimated 40% of the inmates incarcerated in Hamilton County have mental illness. The County's goal is to significantly reduce that number by helping people access community based care and treatment via permanent supportive housing.This is a challenge with many facets and many opportunities for researchers from different disciplines to become involved:data and computer sciences, the social sciences, health sciences, and researchers in the human and social services fields can all contribute to strategies and solutions to this societal issue.
Call for Researchers
The Hamilton County Development Department is seeking interested student and faculty researchers across multiple disciplines to investigate topics related to supportive housing. Research interests may include:
- Healthcare/Mental Health
- Social Determinants of Health
- Homelessness/Housing
- Jail Reduction/Justice Reform/Reentry
- Change Management
- Data Sharing/Systems Integration
- Communication
- Capacity/Capability Building
- Smart Community Transformation
About FUSE
FUSE is a signature initiative of the Corporation for Supportive Housing that helps communities identify and engage super-utilizers of public systems and place them into supportive housing to break the cycle of repeated use of costly crisis health services, shelters, and the criminal justice system. It provides a double win for communities, allowing public systems to cut costs while improving outcomes for some of their most vulnerable community members. The model represents an opportunity to transform the homeless, health, and criminal justice systems to increase housing stability, reduce emergency health care use and recidivism to jail, and break the cycle of multiple crisis service use, resulting in public cost offsets.
More information about supportive housing projects around the country and the FUSE resource center can be found at the Corporation for Supportive Housing website.
If you are interested in engaging with the Hamilton County FUSE Initiative or want to learn more, please contact Linda Bennett in the Hamilton County Development Office via email at [email protected] or phone at 423-209-6821.