A new study correlates housing instability with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia risk, focusing on a population of United States veterans.
The report was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Tuesday. In it, researchers detail their main finding: Veterans with housing instability were 53% more likely to receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia (ADRD) compared to people with stable housing.
Researchers followed 44,194 veterans who were experiencing homelessness or housing instability and matched them with the same amount of people who weren’t. The team followed data on the people from 2011 to 2019. None of the participants had Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia before the study began in 2011. Midway through the study in 2015, 7.23% and 3.66% of housing insecure and housing stable veterans, respectively, were diagnosed with ADRD.
“Our findings call for greater supports for independent living for veterans experiencing housing instability with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias — such as using federally funded housing vouchers for non-traditional options like assisted living facilities,” Jill Roncarati, one of the researchers from the VA Bedford Healthcare System, said in a statement.
A study released last year found that homeless veterans and veterans at risk for experiencing homelessness were 1.58 and 2.98 times more likely to have an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or ADRD diagnosis compared to stably housed veterans. The overall prevalence of AD/ADRD diagnoses for homeless, at-risk and stably housed veterans was 3.66%, 13.48%, and 3.04%, respectively, according to that study. The researchers on that team found that veterans at risk for homelessness, but not homeless veterans, were more likely than veterans with stable housing to use US Department of Veterans Affairs-paid home and community-based care services.
