New study gives voice to older homeless women navigating streets and shelters

Boston University

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For women in their 50s experiencing homelessness, daily life means far more than finding a place to sleep. It means navigating dangerous shelter environments, managing serious health conditions without adequate support, and fighting to maintain dignity in a system that was never designed for them. A new study by Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW) Professor Judith Gonyea puts their experiences at the center.

Published in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, the study was co-authored by Professor Gonyea and Kelly Melekis of the University of Vermont. Their research examines how older women experiencing homelessness navigate life on the streets and in emergency housing shelters, and how those environments affect their physical and emotional well-being, their sense of self-worth, and their path toward stable housing.

A Population Falling Through the Cracks

Women in their 50s experiencing homelessness occupy a particularly precarious position. Too young to qualify for federal old-age benefits and typically without minor-age children, they often fall between the targeted populations that safety net programs are designed to serve. At the same time, due to poor nutrition and harsh living conditions, many experience accelerated aging, presenting with chronic health conditions more commonly seen in housed women in their 70s and 80s.

Although one of the fastest-growing groups within the homeless population globally, older women experiencing homelessness have remained largely absent from research and policy conversations. This BUSSW study seeks to change that.

What the Research Found

Professor Gonyea and Melekis conducted in-depth interviews with 15 women in their 50s experiencing homelessness in an urban northeastern U.S. city. The majority identified as women of color. Trauma was nearly universal among participants, and most were managing significant physical and mental health challenges.

Five key themes emerged from the interviews, each reflecting how shelter environments intensify the daily struggles these women face. Participants described shelters as dehumanizing places where they were reduced to a bed number rather than recognized as individuals.

They reported feeling unsafe, often describing shelter life as akin to prison, requiring constant hypervigilance to protect themselves from bullying, theft and potential violence. Many found the harsh physical conditions of shelters, including bunk beds ill-suited to older bodies, limited privacy and inadequate resources, to be in direct conflict with their health needs. Rigid rules and protocols left women feeling stripped of control and autonomy. And the absence of stability and normalcy, from unpredictable daily schedules to compulsory daytime displacement onto the streets, wore heavily on their sense of self and hope for the future.

Despite these challenges, the women demonstrated remarkable resilience and resourcefulness, finding creative ways to maintain their appearance, preserve their belongings, and hold onto a sense of identity beyond homelessness.

Why This Matters

The findings point to an urgent need to transform both the physical and social environments of emergency housing shelters using trauma-informed and aging-responsive approaches. The authors call for shelters to move away from authoritarian, one-size-fits-all practices and toward models that recognize the distinct needs of older women, including those related to health, trauma, safety and dignity.

As the number of older adults experiencing homelessness continues to grow, Gonyea and Melekis state that older women must no longer be invisible in research, policy or practice. Their voices and their experiences must be part of the solution.

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Journal

Frontiers

DOI

10.3389/fgwh.2026.1697164 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Walk in our shoes: older homeless women's perceptions of the challenges of navigating streets and shelter life

 

Moderate UV light is best to boost the vitamin D content of edible mushrooms, McGill study finds

Up to half the world’s population suffers from a deficiency of this critical nutrient

McGill University

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Researchers at McGill University have discovered that moderate ultraviolet (UV) light exposure is best when the technique is used to enhance vitamin D₂ in edible mushrooms. Excessive exposure leads to nutrient degradation or a plateau effect, they found. The paper also provides quantitative guidance. 

The researchers’ work supports efforts to address vitamin D deficiency, which affects between 30 and 50 per cent of the world’s population, as well as enhance the nutritional value of mushrooms more broadly. 

“While many studies demonstrated that UV could improve mushroom nutrition, there hasn’t been a standardized or optimized set of conditions that researchers and industry can reliably follow,” said Valérie Orsat, Professor of Bioresource Engineering and study co-author.  

“Our findings highlight a clear gap: the need for species-specific and unified UV treatment guidelines. These should define safe and effective ranges that consistently enhance nutrients like vitamin D₂ without compromising quality attributes such as texture, colour or overall consumer appeal,” she said. 

Regulatory bodies like the U.K. Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland have confirmed that UV-treated mushroom products are safe for consumption. Human studies have already shown that consuming UV-treated mushrooms can increase vitamin D levels, confirming their nutritional benefit. 

Meta-analysis fills in the gaps 

Previous research on this topic has shown significant variability in factors such as UV intensities, exposure times and treatment setups used across studies, often leading to inconsistent outcomes.  

In this study, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 22 studies published between 2020 and 2025. They gathered and analyzed key variables such as UV intensity, exposure time, dose, mushroom form (sliced or whole) and resulting vitamin D₂ levels, and applied a response surface analysis – a statistical modelling technique – to map how these variables interacted.  

This approach allowed them to identify the safe and optimal treatment zone, the conditions that maximized vitamin D₂ while maintaining mushroom quality, for each species. 

“In short, we moved beyond individual studies to build a data-driven, unified picture of what works best,” Orsat said. 

Blue and green light to be considered 

Soon, the team will begin exploring how different types of light, such as blue and green light, can be used individually or in combination with UV to enhance a broader range of desirable compounds found in mushrooms. 

“Future research is shifting toward a more integrated approach, using strategically programmed light treatment from cultivation through post-harvest and storage,” said Augustine Edet Ben, study co-author and a McGill PhD student. “The idea is to develop synergistic light treatments that not only boost vitamin D₂, but also improve other nutrients, bioactive compounds and overall quality through storage and retail display.” 

“Ultimately, this could lead to standardized, scalable light-based technologies for the mushroom industry, delivering safer, more nutritious and functionally enhanced products across the entire supply chain,” he said. 

About the study 

“UV-Induced Nutritional Transformation of Mushrooms: From Molecular Shifts to Health Outcomes,” by Augustine Edet Ben and Valerie Orsat, was published in Food Research International. 

The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies. 

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Journal

Food Research International

DOI

10.1016/j.foodres.2025.118235 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

UV-Induced Nutritional Transformation of Mushrooms: From Molecular Shifts to Health Outcomes

 

Dads are dying after their kids are born, and no one is tracking it

New study examines paternal mortality data in Georgia, finds 60% of deaths were preventable

Northwestern University

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• Majority of deaths resulted from potentially preventable causes like homicide, accidental injury, suicide

• While maternal deaths are closely tracked, paternal mortality is rarely examined

• Study includes Georgia data only 

• Studying these trends nationally is difficult because of how data is collected and de-identified

CHICAGO — It took the better part of a century for maternal mortality to be recognized, forgotten and finally recognized again as an urgent public health crisis in the United States. In contrast, research shows fathers — particularly men in their 20s through early 40s — die disproportionately from preventable causes such as suicide, overdose, homicide and accidental injury. Yet paternal mortality is rarely examined in connection to the transition to parenthood.

Northwestern University scientists are trying to change that.

A new Northwestern study examined all 130,267 babies born in Georgia in 2017 and tracked whether their fathers died at any point during the following five years, through 2022. Of those fathers who died within five years (796), 60% of the deaths were preventable, which the study authors call a “huge, missed opportunity.” These deaths resulted from homicide (143), accidental injury (142), suicide (102) or overdose (93), while 296 fathers died of natural causes.

The study will be published May 4 in JAMA Pediatrics. 

While maternal mortality review committees focus specifically and in depth on deaths of mothers in the first year of a child’s life, this is, to the researchers’ knowledge, the first study published in a major medical journal to examine paternal mortality in the years following a child’s birth.

“Our data show that fathers die frequently in the first years of their child’s life, and we have no systems in place to understand how we might prevent it,” said corresponding author Dr. Craig Garfield, professor of pediatrics and medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “That’s a huge blind spot.”

The findings echo what maternal mortality research has long shown: Deaths around the transition to parenthood are shaped less by biology than by social vulnerability, and many are preventable — even as paternal deaths remain largely uncounted and unaddressed. Prior research has shown that paternal involvement is linked to better child and family health outcomes, while paternal absence is associated with a range of adverse outcomes for children.

Still, fatherhood appears to be protective

Despite fathers in the study dying disproportionately from preventable causes, the scientists found being a father was associated with lower death rates among all men in Georgia between 2017 and 2022. 

After age 20, the death rate for fathers is consistently lower compared to men who are not fathers. For example, among those aged 30 to 34, the death rate for Georgia fathers was 120 deaths per 100,000 men compared to Georgia non-fathers, whose death rate was 231 deaths per 100,000 men.

“Being a father appears to be protective in this particular group of men,” Garfield said. “We were surprised to see reduced mortality among men who are fathers. Whether that is due to changes in lifestyle or a new purpose or new roles and responsibilities, we don’t know, but it is certainly worth further study.”

More about the study

The scientists examined all births in Georgia between 2017 and 2022 and linked them to death records for fathers listed on birth certificates. They analyzed causes of death, overall mortality rates and whether fatherhood, itself, appeared to affect men’s risk of death.

Non‑natural deaths occurred more frequently among younger fathers. Medicaid‑paid births and unmarried status were linked to higher homicide risk. Fathers who died were more likely to have been older, non‑Hispanic Black, unmarried, living in rural areas and to have had Medicaid‑paid births. Higher education, Hispanic ethnicity and Tricare‑paid births were associated with fewer deaths.

Experiences in the hospital inspired the work

As a pediatrician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Garfield said he has encountered many situations in which mothers in the neonatal intensive care unit were coping with the death of their partner — whether from a shooting, a car accident or another sudden cause.

“In my experience, that happens more often than mothers dying,” Garfield said. “The death of any parent has enormous consequences for a child, and as a pediatrician, I care most about how a parent’s death impacts the child, especially in the early years.”

Despite publishing dozens of papers on fathers’ mental and physical health, Garfield said he could find little research examining fathers’ deaths in the years immediately following a child’s birth.

Why Georgia?

Examining paternal mortality at a national level is currently not possible. While birth and death data are collected at the state level, when that data is collected at the national level, personally identifiable information is removed and there is no way to determine individual cause of death, among many other important factors. Garfield and team had access to Georgia’s data through an existing project — the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System for Dads (PRAMS for Dads survey) — which they created and first piloted in the state in 2018.

He hopes the findings will prompt other states to analyze their own data to better understand paternal mortality at a state level and work collectively to create a system to analyze this important national trend.  

“If we don’t measure it, we can’t change it,” Garfield said. “That affects thousands of children.”

Other Northwestern co‑authors include Clarissa D. Simon and Katy Bedjeti.

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Journal

JAMA Pediatrics

Article Title

Paternal Mortality During Early Childhood

Article Publication Date

4-May-2026

Cognitive decline and household firearm storage among older adults

JAMA Internal Medicine

About The Study: This study found that unsecure firearm storage was more common among those with subjective cognitive decline than among those without, although this observation may be driven by differences in storage status by sex, age, veteran status, and presence of children in the home. Existing clinical guidance recommends assessing firearm access and promoting secure storage for patients with cognitive symptoms; the results of this study suggest these recommendations are not yet reflected in household practices.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kelsey M. Conrick, PhD, MPH, email kmc621@uw.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.0505)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article 

 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.0505?guestAccessKey=69f366a4-cab2-4659-9a08-2cfb54e0c79d&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=050426

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Journal

JAMA Internal Medicine

Hospital-based shootings in the US, 2000-2024

JAMA Network Open

About The Study: 

This systematic review found that hospital-based shootings in the U.S. have increased steadily over the past 25 years, representing an intersection between broader national trends in workplace and firearm violence. Large hospitals, those in the U.S. South, and hospitals in urban communities are particularly at-risk settings. These findings underscore the need for hospital-specific prevention strategies, including consideration of weapons screening technology, alongside broader societal efforts to address rising firearm violence.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sarayna S. McGuire, MD, MS, email McGuire.Sarayna@mayo.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.10552)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.10552?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=050426

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

GRIFT!

Nonprofit hospitals spend billions on management consultants with no clear effect

University of Chicago Medical Center

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In recent decades, management consulting firms have become a fixture in the American healthcare system, wielding outsized influence compared to most other economic sectors. Hospitals navigating challenging financial and regulatory landscapes may call on these specialists for advice on strategic planning, cost-cutting, reorganizations, or revenue-boosting initiatives.

A new paper published in JAMA is the first large-scale, empirical attempt to determine the scale and impact of hospital investment in management consultant services.

“This initial analysis suggests that consultants may deliver neither the dramatic efficiencies they promise nor the harms that critics sometimes fear,” said first author Joseph Dov Bruch, PhD, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Bruch and his colleagues combed through IRS Form 990 filings, which (among other detailed financial disclosures) require nonprofits to describe their five largest external contracts costing over $100,000 each year. Using machine learning, the researchers identified hospital contracts with management consulting firms, compared 306 hospitals that initiated contracts with management consultants between 2010-2022 with a matched group of hospitals that did not, and then analyzed differences in finances, staffing, operations, and patient outcomes.

Over 20% of all nonprofit hospitals engaged management consultants during the study period. In total, the sector spent at least $7.8 billion on management consulting services over roughly a decade, with the average hospital spending $15.7 million — money that might otherwise be used for patient care, facility improvements, or community health programs.

“It’s not necessarily a waste, but we don’t have evidence of meaningful improvements,” said Bruch, who has spent years studying how nonprofit hospitals function in highly financialized markets.

Across metrics such as net patient revenue, operating margin, days of cash on hand, and even claims-based patient outcomes like readmission and mortality rates, there were no statistically significant or systematic changes linked to nonprofit hospitals hiring a management consulting firm. The only exception was a small increase in stroke readmissions — a slight negative effect.

The authors also point out that their current analysis was limited specifically to management consultants, but they recommend greater transparency and public accountability for how hospitals use tax-subsidized dollars on a broader level. When other types of consultants such as HR and IT consultants are included, the total sum spent by nonprofit hospitals reached more than $25 billion in the study period.

“Our study urges hospital executives toward greater caution about how money is spent on management consultants, and it demonstrates the need for additional research on how these contracts may or may not meaningfully impact health systems,” Bruch said.

In addition to informing hospital leaders and policymakers, Bruch says this research was motivated in part by his role as a mentor and adviser. As a health policy professor, he frequently fields questions from students considering healthcare management consulting as a career path.

“Students who genuinely want to make meaningful changes in the healthcare system ask me if management consultants can actually reduce inefficiencies, and whether I would personally encourage that type of professional pursuit,” Bruch said. “Answering those questions has been difficult because the evidence has been so limited. I’m hopeful more research on consultants will help people make more informed decisions about careers in healthcare.”

 

“Changes in Nonprofit Hospitals' Finances, Operations, and Quality of Care After Using Management Consultants” was published in JAMA in May 2026. Co-authors are Joseph Dov Bruch, Cal Chengqi Fang, Yan Bo Zeng, Avni Parthan & Ashvin D. Gandhi.

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Journal

JAMA

DOI

10.1001/jama.2026.5027 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Article Title

Changes in Nonprofit Hospitals' Finances, Operations, and Quality of Care After Using Management Consultants

Article Publication Date

4-May-2026

 

UC Santa Cruz receives California Department of Fish and Wildlife funding to assess health of state’s streams

A $2.2 million grant will scale a pioneering environmental DNA-based index, adding a broad biodiversity assessment tool that benefits statewide management of vital freshwater ecosystems

University of California - Santa Cruz

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image: 

CALeDNA technician Ajith Seresinghe samples Pauley Creek, monitored by the Sierra Streams Institute, in Tahoe National Forest.

view more 

Credit: Photo by Emma Walker

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – Healthy watersheds support wildlife, recreation, and clean water for communities across California. From a public-health standpoint, we need to know if a river or stream is safe to swim or fish in. From the lens of wildlife support, in addition to being clean, a healthy aquatic habitat must sustain a whole food web.

Knowing a stream’s health also indicates how resilient it is to adversities such as wildfires, land-use changes and agricultural runoff. When stream health is compromised, the potential consequences are dire: from a community’s loss of recreational options or a food source, to the rapid collapse of an ecosystem that evolved over millennia.

California invests in work to monitor ecosystems and to understand the range of pressures on them, as well as opportunities to maintain or restore them. For example, through its Cannabis Restoration Grant Program, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) funds innovative research and projects that help support and protect California’s natural resources in areas affected by cannabis cultivation—such as initiatives that help scientists and land managers better detect impacts and guide restoration.

Now, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have been awarded a $2.2 million grant from the program for a project based on a rising and effective monitoring tool: environmental DNA (eDNA). With the CDFW grant funding, UC Santa Cruz researchers will lead a project to extend their genomics-based biodiversity-monitoring platform to create an eDNA-based stream-health index. 

The project will help provide faster monitoring and a clearer, more comprehensive picture of biodiversity conditions across California watersheds and help scientists and resource managers better prioritize restoration and conservation actions in the state’s freshwater ecosystems.

The California Environmental DNA (CALeDNA) program will build upon the state’s traditional stream-health assessments with the speed, precision, and lower-cost processes of genomics, coupled with powerful bioinformatics brought by a California-based startup that spun out of UC Santa Cruz called eDNA Explorer. This approach can halve the time needed to go from field sampling through lab processing, data analyses, and translation of results to useful information, potentially lowering the cost of stream evaluation to hundreds of dollars.

Screening the Golden State’s health

The project’s leaders liken the extraction and analysis of eDNA from California’s streams to a blood test for a routine screening—to gain insights into what’s coursing through the system and get a quick and clear picture of health.  

“We are very grateful to have the chance to bring in AI, geospatial data, historical data—as well as both established and totally novel eDNA assays—all together to make a next generation complementary tool for environmental health assessment for California streams,” said CALeDNA Director Rachel Meyer.

To build the dataset for the index, the team will collect 2,400 samples from over 400 streams across 50 watersheds throughout California between May and September of this year. Many of those samples will be collected by trained volunteers participating in this community science effort. These “community scientists” will go out into the field with standardized eDNA collection training and, ideally, a desire to improve biodiversity monitoring to better understand how our environment is altered by factors such as land use and a changing climate.

“A stream is a system. We understand streams best through the elements we can see, like insects, fish and vegetation. With eDNA we finally get to ask questions about the microbial world beneath as well,” said CALeDNA Chief Scientist Jen Quick-Cleveland.

 

🔬Sign up to be a community scientist 🔬

 

Meyer and Quick-Cleveland run CALeDNA and are the principal investigators of the project to build the California Stream Health Index. They say the index will help identify new early signs of ecological decline, allowing land managers and regulators to respond before impacts become severe. 

Other key collaborators in the project are the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project and the California State Water Resources Control Board, which have decades of experience developing and applying several other stream health scoring methods. Together, the teams will see how the different methods complement each other. The resulting index must be compared with and, to some extent, calibrated, against existing stream-assessment tools and other environmental data. Through this process, the research team aims to ensure the index produces reliable and comparable results across California’s diverse watersheds. 

Harnessing advanced technology

Advanced laboratory methods and machine learning tools will be used by researchers to scour for millions of eDNA sequences and identify thousands of biodiversity patterns, then link those to environmental stressors. Through all stages of development, the index and supporting tools will be vetted by agencies, Indigenous tribes, conservation practitioners, researchers, and land managers. One key area of engagement is on the different lenses index users may want to explore to define stream health. The project will produce standardized sampling protocols, open-source analytical tools, and a cloud-based platform that will allow users to calculate stream health indexes from different lenses, and explore biodiversity data as a whole.

While all steps will be made open-source, a cloud-based platform is critical to make this intuitive for the diverse people who want this stream assessment. eDNA Explorer will inject computational power and user-friendly software to package the stream-health index into web tools that make the data accessible, transparent, engaging, and understandable. 

“Water is life. California’s wildlife, water quality, and communities depend on our ability to do solid stream management,” said Julie Stanford, eDNA Explorer’s chief executive officer. “This project will bring in many perspectives to create a multifaceted index that describes stream health. We’re excited to talk to as many people as possible.”

The research team will follow a multi-phase process over three years that includes statewide data collection, development and testing of candidate indexes, scientific review with end users, and the release of final tools and protocols. Community engagement will also help ensure the index and resulting tools are practical and useful for the wide range of organizations working to protect California’s waterways.

“Ultimately, the project aims to establish a reliable and affordable method for assessing stream conditions across the state,” said CDFW Environmental Program Manager Alexandria Turner, “that can be adopted widely and provide important data to help California better safeguard its freshwater biodiversity and watershed health for future generations.”

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