Communicable Illnesses in Street and Shelter Locations

Alameda County Health Care for the Homeless (ACHCH) works closely with the County of Alameda Public Health Department's Division of Communicable Disease Control & Prevention (DCDCP) in an effort to prevent transmission of communicable diseases and respond to incidences of communicable diseases in shelters, homeless service centers, and in street/encampment settings in Alameda County.

ACHCH and DCDCP have jointly developed a toolkit to support homeless service providers in carrying out the fundamental strategies to prevent communicable diseases in shelters, streets and homeless services centers:

1. Create an internal process to identify outbreak or incidence of communicable disease.
2. Educate staff and residents to recognize specific disease patterns.
3. Document cases of similar etiology/symptoms with sufficient details to track source of disease outbreak.
4. Rapidly implement measures to control spread of illness based on mode of transmission of suspected infectious disease including isolation, PPE use, hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfection.
5. Notification to ACHCH and local health department of an outbreak to secure expertise and help in managing the outbreak.

Select Communicable Diseases and Infection Control Practices in Congregate Settings