Integrated care for homeless people--sharing knowledge and experience in practice, education and research: results of the networking efforts to find homeless health workers.

Over the last dozen years, as doctors for homeless people in Pittsburgh, USA and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, we have been networking internationally and travelled the streets to find social and medical workers who bring care to homeless people. We felt the need to reach out on the streets to meet homeless people and their problems, and to reach into mainstream services, academic centres and research institutes, to meet the needs of professionals in housing, social and medical work to deliver integrated care. We sought knowledge and experience to be integrated in practice, education and research, to better serve homeless people.