Outreach for socially marginalized trimorbid veterans in Denmark – preliminary results

The presentation will explore preliminary data from a intersectoral and interprofessional project focusing on direct healthcare for soldier veterans drawing on resources from two very different systems.

Denmark has since World War II, to a varying degree, been part of international military actions. Following that, a growing number of participants in these actions has become soldier veterans. The group comprises approximately 40.000 individuals. It’s estimated that 4000 of these has a mixture of different social, somatic and mental health problems including PTSD . 400 are estimated to have severe problems including Complex PTSD, drug use, homelessness and social exclusion.

HealthTeam for the Homeless (HT), Copenhagen has since 2005 delivered outreach healthcare to hard-to-reach patients in a city-wide network-based system. Following a report from the Danish Ministry of Defence, which indicated many barriers to treatment and continuity of treatment, HT in 2020 made an assessment of the severely marginalized group of veterans in the eastern part of Denmark. The assessment described a level of need and complexity of problems which is comparable to other severely marginalized groups

The team has, in cooperation with outreach social workers from the Veteran department, tested the network based system used for homelessness outreach in a pilot trial. This has led to a 3 year project where this approach is tested in real life setting, funded by the Ministry of Defence, Copenhagen City and The Soldiers Fund.

We present an estimate of the size and profile of the target group, perspectives on treatment and give a preliminary description of possibilities and barriers in the collaboration between army social workers, institutions for veterans and health outreach workers.