“The social determinants of health (SDOH) — which include income, education, housing, environment, and food availability — are attracting increasing attention across the health care industry and in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)…”
“In October, the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and the independent nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) co-hosted the Roundtable on Leveraging Data on the Social Determinants of Health. The roundtable brought together more than 80 experts from inside and outside of government to explore new strategies for combining SDOH data with research, clinical, and public health data, and to help develop a new data-driven paradigm for socially focused healthcare. Today, CODE published its independent report on the roundtable with recommendations for public-private collaboration to advance that new paradigm…”
“The report describes many ways that different organizations are using SDOH data and illustrates them with a dozen case studies. Healthcare providers, for example, are collecting SDOH data in clinical settings to improve patient care. Policymakers are using population-wide SDOH data to target healthcare funding. And initiatives such as Healthy People 2020 and the Gravity Project are expanding the use of SDOH data for many applications.”
“CODE’s report calls for a national SDOH Data Strategy that can provide the policy framework to improve interoperability and data access, address privacy concerns, and broadly set the agenda for improved use of SDOH data. Based on input from Roundtable participants and CODE’s own research, the report includes several specific recommendations that such a strategy could implement. Key recommendations include…” Read the full article here.
Source: How HHS Can Use Social Data for Better Healthcare – Joel Gurin and Paul Kuhne, December 16, 2019. FedScoop.
