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In recent years, incarceration rates and prison populations nationwide have grown exponentially for a variety of sociological and political factors. The organization believes that research indicates that this epidemic has had a particularly hard impact on economically vulnerable communities, where a majority of the people brought into custody suffer from addiction, substance use, and/or mental illness. Due to their economic situation these people were likely unable to seek care or treatment from any public health system in the community. This interaction of illnesses and diseases and criminalization in communities and incarceration results in a complex public health and human rights crisis in both correctional and other criminal justice settings. The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights seeks to apply new research to help to mitigate this.

Currently, the US Department of Veterans Affairs is engaged in the initiative to prevent and end homelessness among military veterans. The DVA works with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and state governments on this initiative.

Emergency response is not specifically addressed in this article. 

As part of the evidence in this article, the author cites Gerard R. and Hailey-Means who are two former inmates of Rikers' Island, Martin Horn who is a former NYC DOC commissioner, Mayor DeBlasio, John Boston of the Legal Aid Society, Kim Knowlton who is a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Susi Vassallo who is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the NYU School of Medicine, and a number of additional individuals and organizations.

• "In a place of tremendous economic desperation, people competed for work in the zone of exclusion, where salaries were relatively high and steadily paid. Prospective workers engaged in a troubling cost benefit assessment that went something like this: if I work in the zone, I lose my health. But I can send my son to law school."
• "Opinions about how the state should address the fate of these Chemobyl victims also serve as a kind of barometer of the country's changing moral fabric."
• "At stake in the Chernobyl aftermath is a distinctive postsocialist field of power-in-the-making that is using science and scientific categories to establish the state's reach. Scientists and victims are also establishing their own modes of knowledge related to injury as a means of negotiating public accountability, political power, and further state protections in the form of financial compensation and medical care."

The focus of this article is on the inequities in public health focused on the group of amerindian canadians and the long term inequties in their mental health care, leading to repeated health crises. 

Dr. Miriam Ticktin is an associate professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She earned her doctorate degree in anthropology in 2002 from Stanford University. She focuses her research efforts on gender, humanitarianism, and human rights.

To support its arguements and produce claims, this article uses statistics from the health care system, personal testimonials, and extensive field work.

The convention was drafted and signed at a special meeting of the IAEA that took place 5 months after the Chernobyl Disaster. No one author or author country could be determined based on the document.