Background

Homeless street sweeps are frequent operations in many cities in the USA in which government agencies move unhoused people living in public outdoor areas. Little research exists on the health impact of street sweeps operations.

Objective

This study was created at the request of community advocacy groups to investigate and document the health impacts of street sweeps from the perspective of healthcare providers.

Design

This is a qualitative study using data gathered from open-ended questions.

Participants

We recruited 39 healthcare providers who provided health and wellness services in San Francisco for people experiencing homelessness (PEH) between January 2018 and January 2020.

Interventions

We administered a qualitative, open-ended questionnaire to healthcare providers using Qualtrics surveying their perspectives on the health impact of street sweeps.

Approach

We conducted qualitative thematic analysis on questionnaire results.

Key results

Street sweeps may negatively impact health through two outcomes. The first outcome is material loss, including belongings and medical items. The second outcome is instability, including geographic displacement, community fragmentation, and loss to follow-up. These outcomes may contribute to less effective management of chronic health conditions, infectious diseases, and substance use disorders, and may increase physical injuries and worsen mental health. Providers also reported that sweeps may negatively impact the healthcare system by promoting increased usage of emergency departments and inpatient hospital care.

Conclusions

Sweeps may have several negative consequences for the physical and mental health of the PEH community and for the healthcare system.

A search for charge-parity (CP) violation in D^{0}→K^{-}K^{+} and D^{0}→π^{-}π^{+} decays is reported, using pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.9  fb^{-1} collected at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the LHCb detector. The flavor of the charm meson is inferred from the charge of the pion in D^{*}(2010)^{+}→D^{0}π^{+} decays or from the charge of the muon in B[over ¯]→D^{0}μ^{-}ν[over ¯]_{μ}X decays. The difference between the CP asymmetries in D^{0}→K^{-}K^{+} and D^{0}→π^{-}π^{+} decays is measured to be ΔA_{CP}=[-18.2±3.2(stat)±0.9(syst)]×10^{-4} for π-tagged and ΔA_{CP}=[-9±8(stat)±5(syst)]×10^{-4} for μ-tagged D^{0} mesons. Combining these with previous LHCb results leads to ΔA_{CP}=(-15.4±2.9)×10^{-4}, where the uncertainty includes both statistical and systematic contributions. The measured value differs from zero by more than 5 standard deviations. This is the first observation of CP violation in the decay of charm hadrons.

We present results of a search for two hypothetical strange dibaryon states, i.e. the H-dibaryon and the possible Λn‾ bound state. The search is performed with the ALICE detector in central (0–10%) Pb–Pb collisions at sNN=2.76 TeV, by invariant mass analysis in the decay modes Λn‾→d‾π+ and H-dibaryon →Λpπ−. No evidence for these bound states is observed. Upper limits are determined at 99% confidence level for a wide range of lifetimes and for the full range of branching ratios. The results are compared to thermal, coalescence and hybrid UrQMD model expectations, which describe correctly the production of other loosely bound states, like the deuteron and the hypertriton.

The production of the ρ(770)0 meson has been measured at midrapidity (|y|<0.5) in pp and centrality differential Pb-Pb collisions at sNN= 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The particles have been reconstructed in the ρ(770)0→π+π- decay channel in the transverse-momentum (pT) range 0.5-11 GeV/c. A centrality-dependent suppression of the ratio of the integrated yields 2ρ(770)0/(π++π-) is observed. The ratio decreases by ∼40% from pp to central Pb-Pb collisions. A study of the pT-differential 2ρ(770)0/(π++π-) ratio reveals that the suppression occurs at low transverse momenta, pT<2 GeV/c. At higher momentum, particle ratios measured in heavy-ion and pp collisions are consistent. The observed suppression is very similar to that previously measured for the K∗(892)0/K ratio and is consistent with EPOS3 predictions that may imply that rescattering in the hadronic phase is a dominant mechanism for the observed suppression.

Differential cross sections of charged particles in inelastic pp collisions as a function of p_T have been measured at [Formula: see text] at the LHC. The p_T spectra are compared to NLO-pQCD calculations. Though the differential cross section for an individual [Formula: see text] cannot be described by NLO-pQCD, the relative increase of cross section with [Formula: see text] is in agreement with NLO-pQCD. Based on these measurements and observations, procedures are discussed to construct pp reference spectra at [Formula: see text] up to p_T=50 GeV/c as required for the calculation of the nuclear modification factor in nucleus-nucleus and proton-nucleus collisions.