Towards healthier homes in humanitarian settings

The report explores how shelter support for housing reconstruction, including through self-recovery, can contribute to physical and mental wellbeing in the short- and long-term for people recovering from disasters. The report aims to share knowledge about the connections between housing and mental and physical health and contains recommendations to inform humanitarian shelter responses and ensure wide co-benefits of post-crisis rebuilding, especially in self-recovery contexts.

The recommendations are (p. 6):

1. An ‘Environmental Health’ inter-cluster Working Group should be formed, including Health, Shelter and WaSH experts.
2. The Shelter Sector, working in collaboration with other humanitarian and development actors and academics, should develop evidence of the beneficial impacts of improved shelter on mental and physical health. This report identifies a non-exhaustive list of further research that can inform practice.
3. A priority list of health-related standards and/or indicators should be developed, along with the means to allow it to be context-specific.
4. Context analyses should incorporate prevailing health risks and their relationship to housing, including community perceptions, plans and priorities.
5. The Shelter and Settlements Sector should use the current public interest in global health generated by COVID-19 to reinforce an understanding of the impacts of living conditions on mental and physical health.