Advancing Health Equity: Addressing Social Needs by Leveraging Resources from Northwell Health System to the Community

Claudia S.P. Fernandez

A chapter in From Clinical Practice to Public Health Applications - The Successful, Sustainable and Scalable Outcomes of the Clinical Scholars Program from IntechOpen

Abstract: Health inequities arise from the societal conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age--commonly referred to as social determinants of health (SDoH), which include five domains: economic stability, neighborhood and built environment, education access and quality, healthcare access and quality, and community and social context. Collectively, SDoH accounts for 80% of an individual's health. To mitigate these SDoH and advance health for all, we embarked on the Wicked Problem Impact Project, SHELTER: Strengthening Health through Housing Education, Linkages & Training to Empower Residents. Project aims included (1) improve patient access and utilization of healthcare by addressing adverse SDoH, specifically housing insecurity, (2) enhance the training of our interprofessional healthcare team to better understand what SDOH are and ways to screen and address them, and (3) strengthen our community programs and partnerships to collaboratively address SDoH upstream in two priority communities (Jamaica and Hempstead). The initial Clinical Scholars team consisted of interprofessional specialists representing pharmacy, internal medicine, pediatrics, social work, and public health. Within months, the SHELTER team grew, and the work evolved, broadening its focus from housing insecurity to programs that addressed numerous SDoH. Successful outcomes include the implementation of a universal SDOH screening and navigation program, a medical-legal partnership, various food as health programs, health equity trainings, the establishment of an educational pipeline program, and a regional health equity taskforce made up of various community and faith-based organizations. Collectively, the work has resulted in many successes and the ability to scale and sustain efforts.

Keywords: SDoH; integrated healthcare delivery systems; healthcare disparities; healthcare equity; housing insecurity; community-based collaboration/initiatives/interventions; community-based participatory research; health-related social needs; Clinical Scholars (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/89812 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:330916

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.115591

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().