The economic fallout related to the COVID-19 pandemic has yet to hit healthcare, but the result is likely to be an amplification of longstanding disparities within the U.S. healthcare system. Factors such as food insecurity, homelessness and access to care can affect a staggering 80% of patient outcomes. There is no single solution, and healthcare providers…
Nurses play a vital role in uncovering and addressing patients’ social determinants of health (SDOH), Julia Resnick, the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) senior program manager of strategic initiatives, told nurse leaders during AONL 2021, the annual conference of the American Organization of Nursing Leadership. “Health is more than just healthcare and there is a growing…
Over the last decade, members of the medical and public health communities around the world have widely studied and acknowledged the impact of social determinants of health (SDOH)—the conditions in the environments where people live, learn, work, play, and age—on a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life-risks and outcomes.[1] In the past year or…
Covid-19 laid bare the long-standing vulnerability of minority and low-income communities in U.S. society and its health system even as we celebrated the power of scientific innovation to rein in the pandemic. It’s time to turn that innovation, driven by an even greater mind shift, to end inequality in treatment. In perhaps no condition is…
Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age; they are shaped by the distribution of money, power, and resources at global, national, and local levels. Leveraging SDOH offers tremendous opportunities in healthcare. Increasingly, evidence suggests that focusing on “upstream” interventions outside of traditional clinical care…
The transition from a fee-for-service healthcare model to value-based care (VBC) in the U.S. has continued to gain momentum in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s because providers operating on a fee-for-service basis saw revenue fall sharply through much of last year as elective procedures were cancelled and many patients delayed primary care, even…
Public Health 4.0, or Population Health 4.0, is the recognition of health as a global entity and the focus on identifying and eliminating health disparities, unnecessary costs, and comorbidity. Unlike the previous three phases of public health, the focus in 4.0 is on population health management. As the healthcare industry moves toward a more holistic…
Hundreds of medical and social-services organizations have advocated for the passage of the Social Determinants Accelerator Act of 2021, a bipartisan House bill that would establish an interagency council on SDOH, among other provisions. As outlined in a letter sent this week by the Aligning for Health association to members of the House Energy and…
Educational attainment is one of the key social determinants of health influencing health disparities, with individuals without a high school education facing the greatest barriers to wellness, according to the inaugural America’s Health Rankings Health Disparities Report from United Health Foundation. Particularly, the report found stark health disparities in mental and behavioral health among those…
Humana’s Bold Goal strategy led to a 6.8 percent decrease in the number of unhealthy days for San Antonio members. A previous version listed 8.6 percent as the figure. Humana has partnered with a technology platform and a group of community-based organizations to address social determinants of health for Medicare Advantage members in San Antonio, Texas. Alamo…