In March 2018, Archstone Foundation’s Board of Director’s approved $250,000 to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to examine the intersection between social determinants of health and the delivery of health care.
This work seeks to support 25 million older Americans in addressing social needs care, and to engage a trained workforce, including social workers and gerontologists, to support them. Through the work of an ad hoc committee, recommendations will be made on how to: 1) expand social needs care services; 2) better coordinate roles for social needs care among interprofessional care teams of clinical and community health settings; and 3) optimize the effectiveness of social services to improve health and health care.
Recommendations may address areas such as integration of services, training and oversight, workforce recruitment and retention, quality improvement, research and dissemination, and governmental and institutional policy for health care delivery and financing. The expert committee’s conclusions and recommendations on how to integrate social needs care services into health care delivery, and how to better integrate and coordinate interprofessional care teams across clinical and community settings, will be culminated in a final report.
It is Archstone Foundation’s hope that this committee will also: 1) carefully examine the deep intersection between health care and social needs care, or what has been referred to as “social or direct services” for decades; 2) seek to identify resources to support government agencies and nonprofits who have long-served as the backbone of the aging services network across the country; 3) keep in mind the ethnic diversity, including language and cultural competence of those in need of care; 4) identify important roles gerontologists and social workers can play in addressing social needs and social determinants; 5) help to identify professional skills and competencies needed to act on the recommendations of this study; and 6) provide a roadmap for foundations and organizations to work in partnership at all levels to enable older people to remain in their homes and communities.
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Integrating Social Needs into the Delivery of Health Care to Improve the Nation’s Health
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