Patient Engagement Interviews

Bringing Cultural Competence to Social Determinants of Health Work

by Sara Heath

When a food security program in Dorchester, one of the boroughs of Boston, started offering up English muffins, it quickly became apparent those subsidized meals wouldn’t be fruitful. What was missing from that social determinants of...

Boosting Preventive Care Access in Immigrant Patient Populations

by Sara Heath

For the mostly immigrant population Silvia Posada sees at her organization, Essen Health Care, patient access to care—particularly preventive care and chronic disease management—isn’t a given. Many of these patients...

How PAs, APPs Expand Patient Care Access, Patient Satisfaction

by Sara Heath

In her over 30 years as a physician assistant (PA), Dawn Morton-Rias, Ed.D, PA-C, has never had a patient decline her services and ask for a physician, although she’s sure to always make clear she isn’t one. That’s because...

Providence Reflects One Year After Health Equity Pledge

by Sara Heath

A year after making its health equity pledge, Providence is excited about the work it’s done to reduce racial health disparities. Although far from complete, the organization is celebrating its progress in leveraging insights from...

Data on Justice-Involved Populations Targets SDOH, Cuts Recidivism

by Sara Heath

Clocking in at around $150,000 in a single state annually, recidivism is a costly problem for the American taxpayer, and yet one of the most poignant examples of where concerted care coordination and social determinants of health work can...

4 Key Focus Areas for Payer, Provider Health Equity Work

by Sara Heath

It’s easy for health equity work to devolve into a bit of analysis paralysis, leaving even the best-intentioned people stuck questioning how to progress forward, according to Kulleni Gebreyes, MD, a former ED doc turned Deloitte...

Top 3 Challenges to Social Determinants of Health Referrals

by Sara Heath

For South Texas Physician’s Alliance, social determinants of health referral has been a learning experience. The organization, which has joined providers across the country in efforts to address social determinants of health, knew the...

NQF Uses Clinical Quality Measures to Improve Health Equity

by Sara Heath

The National Quality Forum (NQF) wants to make it easier to improve health equity, and that starts with an effort to embed equity into clinical quality measures across the care continuum. The organization, which has a long history of...

Using Patient Satisfaction Surveys for Practice Improvement

by Sara Heath

For Sutter Independent Physicians (SIP), patient satisfaction surveying was a fragmented process. According to the independent physician association (IPA), giving practices actionable insights about the patient experience that could yield...

How to Implement Social Determinants of Health Referral Tools

by Sara Heath

In a past life working as a nurse, Sherry Norquist, MSN, ACM, remembers going through her Rolodex when one of her patients presented with social determinants of health referral needs. She’d collaborate with her colleagues to find the...

How Neighborhood Disadvantage Drove COVID Health Disparities

by Sara Heath

When Daniel Carrión, PhD, MPH, a researcher from Mount Sinai, thinks of COVID-19 racial health disparities, he thinks of the subway. After all, needing to ride the subway—or work an essential job—are all strong links to...

How Convenient Care Access, Scheduling Closes Gaps in Care

by Sara Heath

Like nearly every other healthcare organization, the Indiana- and Michigan-based Beacon Health System is eyeing the gaps in care opened during the pandemic carefully. But in addition to the targeted patient outreach happening in offices...

How Nurse Practitioners Can Put Health Disparities Work into Action

by Sara Heath

After a year of identifying and understanding how health disparities and social determinants of health are affecting patient outcomes, it’s time for the medical community to take action toward actually addressing public and population...

Using Patient-Centered Care for Hospital Room Design

by Sara Heath

For Zeke Triana, the head of Facilities, Planning, Design, and Construction at Cedars-Sinai in California, planning the organization’s hospital room design was personal. With his own experience as a patient, he knew that a...

How NIH Uses Community Health Partnership for Participant Engagement

by Sara Heath

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is looking to change the paradigm for medical research participation, working toward better participant engagement and diversity by leveraging strong community health partnerships and promoting...

Key Steps for Opening the Digital Front Door, Digital Transformation

by Sara Heath

The digital front door isn’t just unlocked; it’s opening wide, and healthcare organizations that want to remain competitive need to figure out how to make it an entrance to a wholly connected patient journey. “This is an...

How to Market Patient Education to Support Patient Experience

by Sara Heath

At Children’s Wisconsin, parents of newborns have a lifeline. Through a targeted customer relationship management strategy, the healthcare organization has been able to direct key patient education and care access information to new...

Embedding Health Equity as a Patient Safety, Clinical Quality Issue

by Sara Heath

For Leah Binder, president and CEO of patient safety rankings organization The Leapfrog Group, embedding health equity as part of patient safety is a no-brainer. “This year, the issue of equity and inclusion have emerged as major...

Strategies to Address Housing as a Social Determinant of Health

by Sara Heath

Healthcare organizations looking to address housing insecurity and housing quality as key social determinants of health can look at their mission as a three-tiered roadmap, according to Kelly Kelleher, MD, vice president of Community Health...

Why Poor Diversity in Medical Research Threatens Health Equity

by Sara Heath

When it comes to public health or medical research, there shouldn’t be any study about minority communities that doesn’t include minority communities. In failing to engage with stakeholders from racial, gender, or other...