{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,18]],"date-time":"2026-05-18T13:17:42Z","timestamp":1779110262727,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":53,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"23","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,6]],"date-time":"2020-12-06T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1607212800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IJERPH"],"abstract":"<jats:p>There is robust evidence that homelessness and the associated life conditions of a homeless person may cause and exacerbate a wide range of health problems, while healthcare for the homeless is simultaneously limited in accessibility, availability, and appropriateness. This article investigates legal frameworks of health care provision, existing knowledge on numbers of homeless to be considered, and current means of health care provision for four EU countries with different economic and public health background: Austria, Greece, Poland, and Romania. National experts investigated the respective regulations and practices in place with desk research. The results show differences in national frameworks of inclusion into health care provision and knowledge on the number of people experiencing homelessness, but high similarity when it comes to main actors of actual health care provision for homeless populations. In all included countries, despite their differences in economic investments and universality of access to public health systems, it is mainly NGOs providing health care to those experiencing homelessness. This phenomenon fits into conceptual frameworks developed around service provision for vulnerable population groups, wherein it has been described as \u201cstructural compensation,\u201d meaning that NGOs compensate a structural inappropriateness that can be observed within public health systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ijerph17239114","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,7]],"date-time":"2020-12-07T12:24:39Z","timestamp":1607343879000},"page":"9114","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["How Structural Compensation Facilitates Health Care for the Homeless. A Comparative View on Four European Union Member States"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2099-1916","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ursula","family":"Trummer","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Health and Migration, 1090 Vienna, Austria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6511-1858","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sonja","family":"Novak-Zezula","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Health and Migration, 1090 Vienna, Austria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mariola","family":"Chrzanowska","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Econometrics and Statistics, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4401-5058","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Christos","family":"Michalakelis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Informatics and Telematics, Harokopio University of Athens, 17778 Tavros, Athens, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Roido","family":"Mitoula","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Environment Geography and Applied Economics, Harokopio University of Athens, 17676 Kallithea, Attiki, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8000-8421","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adam","family":"Rybka","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Town Planning and Architecture, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture, Rzeszow University of Technology, 35-959 Rzesz\u00f3w, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Snejana","family":"Sulima","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Law, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, 700506 Iasi, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Monika","family":"Zieli\u0144ska-Sitkiewicz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Econometrics and Statistics, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Health Care for Homeless People (1988). 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