Chicago — A new online game developed by the Center for Healthy Work at the University of Illinois Chicago demonstrates how different workers in an organization are impacted by social determinants of health.

The Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine today announced $200,000 in planning grant awards for two historically Black universities as part of a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to understand how data on social determinants of health can transform public health data systems in the Gulf of Mexico region.

Dr. Sandra E. Ford, the former special assistant to the President for public health and science in the White House Domestic Policy Council, will co-chair the annual forum convening policymakers and practitioners to explore the state of SDoH policy.

Dr. Sandra E. Ford, special assistant to the President for public health and science, White House Domestic Policy Council, joins an all-star lineup of speakers, including representatives from HHS, CMS, the CDC, and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Christen Linke Young, deputy assistant to the president for health and veterans affairs at the White House, will share an update from the Biden-Harris Administration on its whole of government approach to social determinants of health (SDoH).

RISE is thrilled to announce Jessica Schubel as the headline speaker at the Social Determinants of Health Policy Forum, which will take place December 2-4 in Washington, D.C.

Social determinants of health refer to the circumstances in which individuals are born, grow, live, work, and age, encompassing factors such as income, education, and access to healthcare.

Statements Highlights: Adverse social factors, such as insurance status, food insecurity, lack of funds for medication and others, may lead to worse heart failure outcomes. Caregiving by family and friends of people with heart failure is increasingly...

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to understand the longitudinal relationship between financial, psychosocial, and neighborhood social determinants and glycemic control (HbA_1c) in older adults with diabetes.

Despite growing interest around clinical screening for health-related social and environmental risk factors, little evidence exists regarding screening formats that maximize disclosure of psychosocial information.

This study compares psychosocial and socioeconomic adversity disclosure rates in face-to-face interviews versus electronic formats in a large, urban pediatric emergency department. (Read the full article)

Although pediatric professional guidelines emphasize addressing a child’s social environment in the context of well child care, it remains unclear whether screening for unmet basic needs at visits increases low-income families’ receipt of community-based resources.

This study demonstrates that systematically screening and referring for social determinants of health during primary care can lead to the receipt of more community resources for families. (Read the full article)

Decades of rallying cries from professional societies, medical education and training programs, and government stakeholders have distilled the conversation of social determinants of health (SDOH) from theoretical proposals into practical solutions [1-3]. No longer standing on the precipice of change, we are now in the trenches. The nation's health care system recognizes SDOH as important drivers of health and is taking steps to address them in the practice environment.

More widespread action and attention by the health care system drives the need to train the next generation of physicians in the concepts and actions related to SDOH. This includes SDOH as a core part of the medical curriculum, offering clinical and research experiences and service in the community [4-5]. Unfortunately, to date only a handful of programs have brought this vision to fruition. Across the country, most programs offer educational content that is largely didactic and provided in short or one-time sessions [6]. Though a start, such approaches are insufficient to prepare the next generation of physicians for their important work ahead.

In New Orleans, the NOLA Hotspotters are an interdisciplinary group of medical, public health, nursing, and pharmacy students inspired by the work out of Camden, New Jersey, to "hot spot" patients with high utilization, which is often related to social needs [7]. While the results of the Camden program have been widely discussed following publication of their work, we argue the benefit of such a program exists beyond reduced emergency department visits or health care spending [8]. The...

By showing how local data on social determinants of health compare to data from similar communities, we hope to encourage innovation, foster peer-to-peer learning, and identify promising practices.

Social determinants of health—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age—have gained increasing interest among policymakers and practitioners as they struggle to improve the value and quality of U.S. health care.

In order to improve patients’ overall health and well-being, we need better information about their social determinants of health – the social, behavioral, and environmental factors – which influence the health and well-being of individuals and communities.

With their multi-faceted understanding of the communities in which they operate, community-based organizations bring a valuable lens that could help health systems learn how certain social services received in the community affect health, and how other factors may dampen an intervention’s effect.

This post describes how health care systems and providers have been—and can be—critical partners in collecting and acting on social determinants of health data.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) announced today that Mathematica is the grand prizewinner of the Agency’s Visualization Resources of Community-Level Social Determinants of Health Challenge for its Data Visualization Tool.

Interview with Karina W. Davidson, PhD, MASc, author of Screening for Social Determinants of Health: The Known and Unknown

Interview with Sandro Galea, MD, author of The Role of Physicians in Addressing Social Determinants of Health