Implementing a Social Determinants of Health Screening Tool at a Federally Qualified Health Center
Abstract Social determinants of health (SDOH) are social conditions, forces, and systems shaping individuals’ daily lives. Education, employment, income, safety, social support, and access to healthy food items and exercise are all social conditions that impact individual and community health outcomes. Providers equipped to identify specific unmet social needs of patients, provide specific patient referrals, and connect patients to the appropriate community resources. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to implement a new SDOH screening and referral process at a Federally Qualified Health Clinic (FQHC) in a rural county in a midwestern state. The project used the Health Leads (HL) tool in one clinic section at the FQHC to identify the social needs of patients, to provide provider referrals for SDOH, and to connect patients to community resources for specific social needs. The data collected from this project helped the FQHC adapt its own standardized SDOH screen founded on the most common social needs of patients at the FQHC. Keywords: social determinants of health (SDOH), Health Leads, rural health, federally qualified health center (FQHC), social needs screen
Nursing, Health sciences, Health education, federally qualified health center (FQHC), Health Leads, inequalities in health, rural health, social determinants of health (SDOH), social needs screen
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