A new survey from Alignment Health found that economic instability, food insecurity, lack of support and transportation access are the biggest social barriers for seniors.

As the U.S. healthcare system works to focus on the move to preventive, personalized care for patients, it’s time to turn the tide on diabetes by addressing the three Cs of chronic disease care: compassion, coordination, and community.

UnitedHealthcare awarded grants to 66 nonprofits across 12 states. The grants will support those struggling with social isolation, behavioral health, food insecurity and other social determinants of health.

The average income of a traditional Medicare enrollee is $85,085, versus $76,720 for a Medicare Advantage enrollee, according to a whitepaper done in partnership between Harvard Medical School and software solutions company Inovalon.

A Humana study in Health Affairs found that 80% of dual-eligible beneficiaries had at least one health-related social need in 2019, compared to 48% of non-dual-eligible enrollees. While prevalence was higher in dual-eligible enrollees, non-dual-eligible enrollees shouldn’t be overlooked, researchers said.

Twelve short years ago I was a single mother, pregnant and surviving off of food stamps where I relied on the support of the SNAP program. Now, I’ve been given the opportunity to build a platform where I can give a voice to those in similar positions that I once was in and advocate for their needs.

A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine discovered that the cost of providing evidence-based solutions for food, housing, transportation and care coordination is $60 per member per month on average. Existing federal funding covers $27 per member per month, less than half of the total cost.

Health equity strategies need to take factors like racism and lack of power into account, said Dr. Shreya Kangovi, executive director of the Penn Center for Community Health Workers. She made these comments last week at the MedCity INVEST conference in Chicago.

Health disparities are often a result of other socioeconomic factors like housing and nutrition. Because of this, the healthcare industry needs to work with other sectors to improve health equity, said Hans Kluge, regional director for Europe of the World Health Organization, at the HIMSS 2023 conference.

Papa’s Social Care Navigation offering provides users with a team of social care navigators, including social workers, registered nurses, case managers and dieticians. This team can help with social issues the patient may be experiencing, including housing, paying for groceries and overdue health screenings. After only offering the program to a select group of health plan clients last year, Social Care Navigation is now available to all of Papa’s payer customers.

Georgia policymakers, county officials and the NAACP are asking the federal government to investigate Wellstar Health System’s closure of two Atlanta-area hospitals in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Complaints have recently been filed with the DOJ, IRS and HHS’ civil rights office.

More than 580,000 individuals are experiencing homelessness in the U.S., and hospitals across the country have dedicated programs to caring for this incredibly at-risk population. The indicatives at UCLA Health, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and University of Illinois Health focus on street medicine, connecting patients to housing and integrating behavioral and preventive care into primary care.

Results from a recent study conducted by OSF Healthcare and Bradley University show that expanding Medicaid to more people hasn’t increased underserved populations’ access to healthcare as much as lawmakers have hoped. The findings shone a light on where hospitals should focus their outreach efforts for Medicaid education.

ReKlame Health launched in 2020 to provide affordable, culturally competent behavioral healthcare to Black and Brown communities in New York. On Monday, the startup announced it is now serving patients in two additional states — New Jersey and Florida.

As a physician I have witnessed the dramatic impact social determinants of health (SDOH) can have on the mental health of older patients. Fortunately, there are steps every practice can take to proactively address them.

The donation will go to the One Albuquerque Fund for its project called “The Gateway.” This project will create a new medical center that will provide emergency overnight beds and other services for those experiencing homelessness.

Possible strategies for employers to reduce disparities include addressing social determinants of health, improving care navigation, leveraging virtual care and upgrading plan offerings, the authors of a Harvard Business Review report said.

Social determinants of health reflect conditions in the environment where an individual is born, lives, […]

This summer, Adventist Health began a three-year partnership with Emcara Health, a primary care provider group that deploys community health workers into the places people live. Five months later, Emcara is saying that the program is seeing significant engagement and improving patients’ ability to keep up with their care plan.

Kaiser Permanente is a couple months into a first-of-its kind community program focused on helping Americans build their credit. Having no credit or bad credit is a major barrier to financial mobility, which is often a necessity to living a healthy life.

Health maintenance is in some ways overmedicalized in the U.S., according to executives at two major health systems. Treatments and procedures aren’t the only ways to support patients’ health — the leaders said that providers would be wise to invest more in social services to improve health outcomes.

The drive to “fix healthcare” is ingrained in our society. Politicians speak about it regularly, consumers struggle to understand it, and yet the “how” of fixing it is delivered with ambiguity and jargon. With increased urgency to improve healthcare, everyone is now laser focused on this topic. But, over time, the term “healthcare” itself has lost the part about care. So how do we fix it?

The survey is from Medicare Advantage company Alignment Healthcare. It focused on social determinants of health, which are proven to have more of an effect on overall health than clinical care.

The Penn Medicine-Wharton Fund for Health, Penn’s venture fund focused on social determinants of health, recently announced investments in its fifth and sixth companies. The fund invested in two Philadelphia-based startups, Fabric Health and Stimulus, bringing its total amount of invested capital to $1.35 million.

Obtaining an understanding of how specific SDOH factors affect individuals is extremely difficult because SDOH data is not methodically collected by clinicians. Natural Language Processing (NLP), a key discipline of AI that uses computers to understand the written word, can overcome this challenge,

Adventist Health announced a three-year partnership with Emcara Health, a national value-based primary care provider group that meets patients where they are. The initiative will enhance the health system’s participation in the CalAIM program, which gives providers state funds to improve health outcomes among Medi-Cal enrollees by broadening care delivery models.

Socially Determined, a healthcare analytics startup focused on social determinants of health insights, closed a $26 million funding round on Tuesday. It will used the funds to expand its customer base, which comprises health plans, health systems and life sciences organizations.

Medical algorithms will continue to preserve the racial bias that has been historically baked into the U.S. healthcare system unless the medical field stops operationalizing race in its machine learning models, according to panelists at a recent panel hosted by the Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies. They argued algorithms should use social determinants of health as a predictor of health outcomes instead of race.

The program, called Digital Bridge, will leverage Icario’s expertise in personalized health communications to help plans ensure members are able to access resources available to get low-cost or free broadband.

Healthcare workers have borne the brunt of pandemic-related stressors. Mental health struggles and burnout have led many to leave the field at a critical time. But having access to virtual behavioral health, especially when in-person treatment options are limited, can help providers and patients cope.