In 2019, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council initiated the Homeless Mortality Data Workgroup to unite expertise on homeless mortality reviews across the county. The workgroup includes researchers, advocates, public health department officials, health center leaders, clinicians, government officials, and communities involved in homeless mortality reviews.

The group is charged with sharing best practices on how localities carry out homeless mortality work, discussing how to best organize mortality data reports, and planning advocacy work that can be carried out with, and on behalf of, homeless mortality data. The group achieves this work by bringing communities across the country together to develop skills and partnerships needed to carry out accurate homeless mortality counts and systematic reviews of homeless deaths.

The workgroup began sharing lessons from localities like Seattle, New York City, and Sacramento who have been carrying out mortality reviews for years, and has grown to include over 15 cities that continue to share best practices and learn from each other. Their first joint project has been compiling the Homeless Mortality Toolkit to share the findings and implications from the communities who conduct homeless mortality reviews, as well as provides guidance on developing or improving a homeless mortality review.

Lessons will include how to create partnerships, methods of data collection and analysis, and examples of how communities have used this information to address homeless mortality.