Background: Healthcare disparities have existed for decades, yet it took a global pandemic to put this emergency into the spotlight. The Joint Commission states “health related social needs” (HRSN) are the root cause of many disparities. HRSN encompasses a wide spectrum including inability to pay bills, poor access to transportation, and lack of housing. At [...]

Background: Healthcare disparities have existed for decades, yet it took a global pandemic to put this emergency into the spotlight. The Joint Commission states “health related social needs” (HRSN) are the root cause of many disparities. HRSN encompasses a wide spectrum including inability to pay bills, poor access to transportation, and lack of housing. At [...]

Background: Efforts have been made to increase social determinants of health (SDoH) screening to connect patients and families to community-based organizations (CBOs) and other resources. Tracking closed loop referrals is one potential measure to assist in assessing whether the resulting referrals and interventions have affected the child’s SDoH or improved the family’s well-being. Our team [...]

Background: In the acute care environment, healthcare workers interface with patients who have limited access to medical care and a high prevalence of social determinants of health (SDoH) barriers.1 The inpatient setting presents a key intervention point where the social needs of vulnerable populations might be addressed. Standard inpatient medicine care teams, however, lack the [...]

Background: When people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) access the US healthcare system, a disparity is created, leading to worse outcomes and lower quality of care.1-5 In-person interpreters are essential in circumventing these disparities, yet pitfalls to collaboration between providers and interpreters persist.6-9 This study’s goal was to assess barriers and identify opportunities for intervention [...]

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious and prevalent public health issue associated with increased healthcare utilization and worse healthcare outcomes. The majority of IPV outcomes research is conducted in emergency and outpatient populations. Our study aims to investigate how IPV exposure affects hospitalization rates and outcomes in adult patients. Methods: We performed a [...]

Background: Interprofessional Education (IPE) has been gaining momentum in academic institutions across the United States since the initiation of the core competencies of interprofessional collaborative practice (IPC). Research suggests that student learners who engage in IPE become interprofessional team members who respect others’ roles and work towards creating positive health outcomes. While the promise of [...]

Background: Nearly 6 million pediatric patients are discharged from the hospital yearly in the United States (AHRQ 2012), and social determinants of health (SDoH) impact discharge outcomes (Nacht 2022). Effective discharge planning prevents patient readmissions (Shapiro 2021), but the literature on how best to educate pediatric trainees is limited (Key-Solle 2010, Widmer 2015). We assessed [...]

Background: Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to have an association with patient health outcomes, including risk of hospital readmission. However, most SES data involve self-reported or aggregated information rather than objective individual measures. HOUSES provides an objective individual metric based upon real property data collected from county assessors that has been validated in other [...]

Background: The social determinants of health (SDOH) are variable factors, including living conditions, employment environments, and social circumstances that influence peoples’ health and can cause health disparities in communities (WHO, 2019). Physicians recognize the importance of SDOH and understand that social factors impact the health outcomes of their patients; however, they may be hesitant to [...]