The social determinants of health (SDOH), the conditions in which we are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age, have a significant impact on health outcomes. Research shows that a whopping 80-90% of health outcomes are dependent on SDOH factors, while medical care only accounts for about 10-20%. New clinical-community partnerships designed to address… Read More »
In our last blog post, we discussed the Biden Administration’s infrastructure package as an example of an upstream policy effort that could promote equity and help address disparities. However, as we pointed out in the first in this series of blogs, stakeholders who interact with community members are best suited to identify social risk factors… Read More »
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines social determinants of health (SDOH) as the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the “conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age.” Currently, SDOH is a hot topic as stakeholders try new ways to improve individual and population health, achieve health equity, and reduce… Read More »
Mass incarceration is a true epidemic. It is also one fueled by social determinants, including race. Over the past four decades of “war on drugs” and “tough on crime” policies, the US incarceration rate has increased by over 500% [pdf]. There are over 2 million men and women in jails and prisons across the country… Read More »
Tailoring the primary care medical home model improves the care experience for US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) patients with homelessness experience, according to a recent study by Dr. Audrey Jones and colleagues in the journal Medical Care. Researchers from the VA’s Informatics, Decision-Enhancement, and Analytic Sciences (IDEAS) Center and Center for Health Equity Research… Read More »
The concept that health comes with significant social determinants is everywhere we turn. This idea – that health and health inequities are driven by “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age [and are] shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources” – is increasingly the focus of articles, research… Read More »
Opioid use is a serious concern that the executive branch of the United States government recently declared a public health emergency. Based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services, in 2016, 2.1 million people misused prescription opioids for the first time, and 42,249 people died from overdosing on opioids. Also in 2016, 170,000… Read More »
What accounts for large differences in life expectancy from one neighborhood to another? This post explains what our team has discovered so far using an “artificially intelligent” approach to understanding social risk at the local level. Where you live affects how long you live In 2018, when the National Center for Health Statistics released the… Read More »
We don’t always think of health insurers as communicators. However, when insurers set reimbursement rates, they provide information that directly influences service delivery. When payors reimburse for certain services, they are informing providers these services are valued and providing these services is encouraged. When payors do not reimburse for services, or reimburse at lower rates,… Read More »
With the current focus on social risk factors (SRFs) affecting health care, it is not surprising that methods for comparing hospital performance might do well to account for such factors in their assessment. If up to 70 percent of health outcomes are driven by factors beyond medical care, and measures used to compare hospitals focus… Read More »
In the new US consumer marketplace, doing good for society is powerful. Choices that people are making about how their food is grown, how companies test household products and reduce their impact on the environment, and how companies make their profits are driving new business models. Farmers are changing their pest and weed-control methods, manufacturers are… Read More »
Suicide prevention and intervention programs and services are vital. Mental health services are essential to support individuals, families, and communities struggling with mental health, suicide, and after suicide loss. But we must also recognize that preventing suicide requires a larger collective, systemic response. Suicide deaths are rising steadily every year, with a record high of… Read More »
Patient-provider racial/ethnic concordance (i.e., physician and patient identify as the same race/ethnicity) has emerged as one key suggestion for mitigating healthcare disparities. Past research has underlined its benefits, including improved infant mortality and more appropriate prescription regimens. However, the sum of the evidence remains unclear and many facets of the patient-provider relationship have yet to… Read More »
What comes to mind when you hear the word “weathering”? Perhaps you think of erosion, depletion, and wearing down. Or maybe enduring, surviving, and withstanding. All of these associations accurately describe what happens to our bodies in response to chronic stress. This particular type of physiological stress affects the brain and other parts of the… Read More »
This month’s podcast focuses on structural racism. Welcome to the Healthy Intersections podcast for November, 2023. This month’s podcast focuses on structural racism in the United States. Joining us to talk about the new Structural Racism Effect Index (SREI) is Dr. Zach Dyer, lead author on the analysis. Check out the dashboard at SREIndex.com and… Read More »
This month’s topic focuses on suicide and social determinants of health (SDoH) Welcome to the Healthy Intersections podcast for October, 2023. Today’s podcast focuses on the links between suicide and social determinants of health in the United States. Suicide is one of the causes of deaths of despair, along with deaths from drugs and alcohol.… Read More »
Happy fall! This month’s Healthy Intersections Podcast focuses on food and climate — a timely topic during the fall harvest months. Food insecurity and food quality are known as important social determinants of health. For example, the percent of residents receiving food assistance (eg, SNAP) is associated with neighborhood life expectancy. On the other hand,… Read More »
Hi everyone! We’re excited to share the August edition of our Healthy Intersections Podcast with you. This month, we hosted Dr. Amanda Onwuka, a social epidemiologist and health services researcher at RTI International, as well as Jeremy Ney, author of American Inequality. We talk about the epidemic of drug overdose deaths in the US, mental… Read More »
The way we’re addressing substance use and overdoses in the United States isn’t working. Let’s be perfectly clear: the “war on drugs” isn’t, and never was, really a war on drugs. It’s been a war waged on communities who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). The war on drugs started well before President… Read More »
Racial justice reframing is the process of shifting our attention from individual choices to the many structural and societal factors that contribute to health inequities. This framing allows us to picture a world where values of equity, shared responsibility, and community care are paramount. We see a world where everyone – regardless of their identities… Read More »
Welcome to the May, 2023 episode of the Healthy Intersections podcast! This month, we sit down again with Carol Schmitt, Chief Scientist at RTI International, to talk about another of the RTI Rarity interactive state maps. This time, we are looking at Oklahoma. You can watch the episode, download the audio file, and read the… Read More »
“Access for the sake of access or inclusion is not necessarily liberatory, but access done in the service of love, justice, connection, and community is liberatory and has the power to transform.” – Mia Mingus, community organizer, disability and transformative justice advocate Are you designing with equity and inclusion in mind? For public health and… Read More »
An Opportunity to Get Ahead of the Overdose Crisis For many Americans, drug use ‘prevention’ conjures memories of early public health campaigns using fearsome imagery and catchy slogans to deter substance use. Campaigns implored youth to “just say no” to drugs, and the public received stark warnings: “this is your brain on drugs.”
Dear readers, it’s been awhile since we published a “top posts of the year” roundup! In fact, we haven’t published one since 2018. So, as we wrap another eventful year of blogging at the intersection of public health and medicine, our holiday gift to you is here! Oh – and we’re still one of the… Read More »
Over the last 25 years, researchers have documented the broad impact of behavioral interventions on a range of psychological and physical health outcomes. Despite the promise of evidence-based treatments, a common challenge for practitioners is ensuring treatment adherence to maximize benefits. This is especially challenging for most chronic conditions. Integrating research and recommendations from medication… Read More »
On this month’s episode of the Health Intersections Podcast, Samy Anand from the Medical Care Section recaps last month’s blog posts and previews September’s issue of the Medical Care journal. Check out these great reads. Next, Jess Williams, co-editor of the blog and podcast, interviews Dr. Cheryl Conner who is a Clinical Associate Professor at… Read More »
The Medical Care Blog is taking a short summer break from publishing new articles. In the meantime, catch up with the latest posts on the blog: Healthy Intersections Podcast, June 2022 featuring MC Governing Councilor Samy with a wrap-up and co-editor Lisa Lines interviewing noted infectious disease epidemiologist Pia MacDonald about COVID-19 – looking back and looking… Read More »
Happy Pride month! In this post, I’d like to share about a research project in progress that is relevant to the LGTBQIA+ community. This post may also be interesting to those of you who care ok about health equity and the social determinants of health (SDoH). I am a member of the queer community myself.… Read More »
Reuter’s announced in January that diabetes deaths in the United States continue to surge well above pre-pandemic levels with over 100,000 Americans dying from diabetes in 2021. Given COVID-19’s relationship to diabetes, we may see this trend continue. Increasing deaths from diabetes is a clear call to action for new solutions. Historically, diabetes has been… Read More »
Understanding internet access through a human rights framework has been a goal of human rights advocates for years. But COVID-19 has brought the idea of “broadband as a human right” to the forefront as a necessary and urgent human need. A recent study exploring the Social Determinants of Health and COVID-19 mortality, found that individuals without… Read More »
In our first blog post of this series, we discussed how the current medical approach misses so much of what influences health, and how it perpetuates health inequities in our society. In this post, we go in-depth on the elements of Whole Person Health (WPH) that are necessary components of a just and equitable approach… Read More »
Our current U.S. medical system doesn’t work. It is not able to adequately care for the sickest, most vulnerable, and least resourced people. It often excludes those seen as “other” in our society. To become a just system, we need a new focus on Whole Person Health (WPH). Very briefly, WPH cares for the whole person and… Read More »
In this episode of our podcast series, Samyuktha Anand, secretary-elect for the Medical Care section, recaps the blog posts we published in January. Next, Jess Williams, co-editor, interviews Nien Chen Li about her recently published paper — a winner of the APHA Medical Care Section’s Student Paper Award in 2020. Dr. Li’s paper is about… Read More »
Evaluating community health worker (CHW) programs can be difficult. Many of the outcomes that we care about, such as patients’ capacity to live healthier lives, can be difficult to measure and take time to manifest. I have been fortunate to be part of a five-year research partnership with the KC Care Health Center that was… Read More »
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure” is a common phrase highlighting the importance and power of data. Indeed, the importance of data was the central theme of the 2021 All In National Meeting. In case you’re unfamiliar, the host of the national meeting is All In: Data for Community Health: a learning network of… Read More »
While some health outcomes improve in the United States, racial and ethnic disparities in pregnancy-related outcomes persist. In the United States, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related complication than white women. In Kansas, Black women are more than three times as likely to die of pregnancy-related complications compared to… Read More »
Medical care is sometimes, though not on this blog, viewed as the gold standard to address inequities. However, access to medical care only accounts for an estimated 10-20% of the modifiable factors that affect population health. The other 80-90% of modifiable factors are often referred to as social determinants of health (SDOH). These are the… Read More »
The annual meeting of the American Public Health Association starts this weekend! This year the meeting is being held in person in Denver with lots of virtual options as well. I know everyone is excited about getting back together and connecting as a community. I can’t wait to connect with friends and colleagues and meet… Read More »
COVID-19 has uncovered and multiplied health workforce equity challenges across the US. In the early days of the pandemic, healthcare workers faced incredible personal risk from an unknown, highly contagious, deadly disease. Insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) and reprimand and dismissal by employers for speaking out worsened this risk. As waves of COVID-19 swept across… Read More »
The Biden Administration’s proposed infrastructure investments are an example of an upstream effort to address disparities related to social determinants of health (SDOH). As mentioned in our previous blog post, SDOH are the conditions or circumstances within which people live, and these differ based on the distribution of power, money, and resources. The systems and… Read More »
Health insurers often pay health plans to manage the care of their members. Good care can help prevent emergencies, such as avoidable trips to a hospital emergency department (ED). Medically complex patients, such as those with behavioral health problems or substance use disorders, tend to have a lot of ED visits. Social determinants of health… Read More »
During the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted health inequality created by social determinants of health (SDoH) in the United States. SDoH include all aspects of the living environment, social support, safety, well-being, and resource availability, directly or indirectly influencing physical health outcomes. Consideration of SDoH is critical for successful comprehensive COVID-19 vaccine rollout.… Read More »
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, telehealth is becoming increasingly ingrained within our healthcare system. This includes environments beyond the traditional office or hospital setting. With 2.3 million people currently residing in US jails or prisons, healthcare delivery to justice-involved individuals (JIIs) is an important component to consider. (Note: the term “justice-involved individual (JII)” refers to those… Read More »
How could alternative pediatric payment models help to address children’s broad health, social, and developmental needs? This post delves into funding and financing challenges and potential solutions. I recently collaborated on a report on alternative payment models for child health with colleagues from the Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy and Mental Health America. The… Read More »
Health equity and the disparities within our health care system were the predominant themes at AcademyHealth’s 2020 Annual Research Meeting (ARM), which concluded on August 6th. As usual, health services researchers gathered to disseminate the latest evidence across a broad range of health care topics and discuss the most pressing issues in health services research… Read More »
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the gross underinvestment in public health, primary care, and the social determinants of health in the United States. Yet, this experience gives us a chance to rethink our health and social service systems, as these are often siloed. We see education, employment, healthcare, housing, and other social services… Read More »
To be at the intersection of technology and product development in a field as ripe for disruption as healthcare couldn’t be more opportune. But how can we use technology to improve community health, especially after COVID-19? Technology and Health: A Budding Relationship On April 10th 2020 the Apple-Google partnership announced a notification tool for contact tracing to support… Read More »
COVID-19 has revealed many vulnerabilities in our societal structure. One particular vulnerability is the risk inherent in our use of congregate institutions to house and treat people. This includes the risks of inpatient psychiatric facilities. Inadvertently, the pandemic has surfaced critical questions that we should seek to answer even when the virus is under control: What is the right… Read More »
Patients are sometimes referred to as “frequent flyers” when they visit an emergency department multiple times for the same issue. Often this is because discharged patients miss necessary follow-up care. This results in further worsening health, and may contribute to the frequent flying. To address this cycle, patients may be referred to a community health… Read More »
As of late, rural health has been a hot topic and buzzword in the public health and health policy spheres. Health Affairs recently published an entire issue related to topics on rural health. The American Journal of Public Health recently issued a call for manuscripts for a special issue dedicated entirely to rural health. Rural… Read More »