On October 13, Kate Breslin presented to the Home Visiting Coordination Initiative on Making Connections: Home Visiting and the Social Determinants of Health.
The World Health Organization describes the social determinants of health as the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. These forces and systems include economic policies and systems, social norms, social policies and political systems.
People from lower-income families are more than twice as likely to face serious illness or premature death, and the vast majority of premature mortality and morbidity is attributable to social, behavioral, and environmental factors, yet we continue to spend most health-related money on medical care, not the social determinants.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued policy statements regarding the important role that poverty and related social determinants play in adverse outcomes across the life course. Supporting decades of evidence about social determinants, positive outcomes for children are associated with screening for and addressing families’ social needs.
Kate’s presentation covered some of the ways New York State’s Medicaid and health systems are exploring better integration of social determinants of health into health systems and payment arrangements.
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