Integrating Primary Health Care for Inmates Cycling in and out of Prisons

What you'll learn

Course overview

The total number of people incarcerated in state, federal prisons, and local jails in the United States have increased in the last 20 years. Over 12 million individuals cycle in and out of these prisons each year. Research demonstrates that there is a substantial gap of health disparities that exist among the inmate population. Despite the staggering number of inmates cycling in and out of prisons (Baldwin et al., 2018), we still have a profound knowledge deficit regarding health, well-being, and health care utilization. In 2020, there were 1.8 million people incarcerated. The number of people living with disabilities has fallen 21 percent since a peak in 2008 (Downs and Henrichson, 2020). There was a 13 percent decrease between year-end 2019 and late 2020 in the number of people in state and federal prisons, from approximately 1.44 million to 1.25 million. The loss of prison population during the first phase of the Coronavirus pandemic was primarily related to age, with 1,311,100 people incarcerated by the middle of 2020, reflecting a nine percent drop in size from the end of 2019.