By Leora I. Horwitz, Carol Chang, Harmony N. Arcilla, et al., Housing Matters, March 4, 2020
A hospital’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of its patients and communities it serves. Traditionally, hospitals accomplish this goal by providing health care services, but an increasing recognition of how social determinants—factors such as housing, neighborhoods, environmental conditions, education, and the built environment—affect health has inspired many hospitals and health systems to rethink how they achieve this mission. To better understand how hospitals and health systems are reorienting their investments, a new study identifies the latest trends in their spending on social determinants of health.
First, the researchers searched LexisNexis and Google for news articles and press releases that included three elements: “health systems” or “hospital”; “investment”; and “social determinant of health” or “community health.” They limited the search to the almost three-year period from January 1, 2017 to November 30, 2019. For each search result, they recorded the type of funding commitment, such as direct grants or loans. They excluded programs that provided direct medical care, subsidized unfunded care, renovated hospitals, and created or implemented social determinants screening or referral tools.
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