4th Annual Social Determinants of Health & Health Equity

7:15am – 8:00am

Conference Registration & Networking Breakfast

8:00am – 8:15am

Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

8:15am – 9:00am

How to Set Health Equity Leaders Up for Success

In the midst of the pandemic shining a spotlight on both new and historically known health inequities, social unrest, and increased discussion of systemic racism, many health systems appointed leaders to focus on equity. Some health systems have even incorporated health equity into their mission statements. While these can be hopeful signs of change, personnel appointments and using the right words are not enough to make and sustain system-wide improvement. This session will explore the best ways to support health equity leaders to ensure their success is not left up to chance.

9:00am – 9:45am

Population Health Strategies to Advance Health Equity

As ​​COVID-19 illuminated the disparities in healthcare access and quality that exist nationwide, health systems were challenged to not only identify populations in need but develop strategies that prioritized continuity of care and communication among historically underserved communities. This session will explore population health management strategies designed and implemented to reduce health inequities. Describing the pandemic as an “opportunity” for health care systems to better address these disparities, learn about critical care and social issues prevalent among the patient populations, the importance of community-level partnerships in improving these outcomes, and further efforts warranted in the pursuit for health equity.

9:45am – 10:15am

Networking & Refreshments Break

10:15am – 11:00am

Striving for Health Equity: Strategies for Reducing Health Disparities

Reducing health disparities brings us closer to reaching health equity. This session will explore how healthcare professionals can enhance the impact of strategies for reducing health disparities, disseminate and tailor these strategies to reach more communities, and expand these strategies for even greater impact by rigorously applying lessons learned from these efforts. Topics to be discussed will include:

- Raising awareness among healthcare providers

- Increasing health literacy in affected communities

- Community partnerships

- Providing greater healthcare resources

11:00am – 11:45am

Why Social Determinants of Health Should Matter to Employers

With hundreds of billions in lost productivity due to health-related problems, and billions spent on chronic diseases and unhealthy behaviors by employers every year, tackling the non-medical factors influencing your employees’ health is critical. Employees don’t leave SDOH at the door, they bring them to work every day. For companies, this can result in both absenteeism (missing work due to poor health) and presenteeism (decrease in performance and productivity at work due to poor health), not to mention workforce-wide effects on productivity, satisfaction, and general wellbeing. This session will explore how to tackle SDOH in your employee population and understanding the societal forces within it.

11:45am – 12:30pm

Short and Long-term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Equity

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human life has led to profound consequences in almost all societies worldwide, and this includes its significant impact on all aspects of health. Health equity has been among the main challenges in any healthcare system. However, with the COVID-19 crisis worsening health inequalities, there is an increasing need for health plans to prioritize health equity. Stark disparities during the pandemic led to new health policy funding and interventions addressing social needs and social determinants of health to improve health equity. Lessons from these interventions and similar pre-pandemic initiatives can guide policy makers in designing more permanent approaches. This session will explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health equity, as well as health policy-led interventions targeting social determinants of health and social needs.

12:30pm – 1:30pm

Luncheon

1:30pm – 2:15pm

A Look at Recent Medicaid Guidance to Address Social Determinants of Health and Health-Related Social Needs

While there are limits, states can use Medicaid to address social determinants of health to health, or associated health-related social needs. Health-related social needs are an individual’s unmet, adverse social conditions (e.g., housing instability, homelessness, nutrition insecurity) that contribute to poor health and are a result of underlying social determinants of health (conditions in which people are born, grow, work and age). To expand opportunities for states to use Medicaid to address health-related social needs, CMS recently issued new guidance that builds on guidance  released in 2021. This guidance supports the current Administration’s goal to advance health equity as well as end hunger by 2030 and stem increases in homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. This session will explore the new opportunities available to states to address HRSN through managed care.

2:15pm – 3:15pm

Panel: Using Social Determinants of Health to Promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Promoting diversity and supporting health equity have risen to the top of the priority list for all types of organizations. One of the most efficient ways to becoming more inclusive is by truly understanding the individual needs of those within your populations, and then meeting those needs with targeted, relevant programming. Gaining this level of understanding is possible if you use social determinants of health data. Topics to be discussed will include:

• Social determinants of health are opportunities, not barriers
• How SDOH data can help you develop more inclusive programs
• Gaining access to SDOH data
• The value SDOH data will bring to your diversity, equity and inclusion efforts
• How SDOH data can help you promote DEI within your organization

3:15pm – 3:45pm

Networking & Refreshments Break

3:45pm – 4:30pm

How a Standards-Based Approach for Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Data Improves Health Equity

What is your organization doing to move the needle forward in the quest for health equity and mitigating barriers to care? What challenges are you experiencing? Likely there are several obstacles, especially given that many of the issues have been rooted in societal inequalities, historical and contemporary injustices, disparities in health and healthcare, and adverse social determinants of health. This session will explore current initiatives and drivers for change intended to help forge us ahead, using a data-driven approach, as we traverse our way through these very complex issues. Some of the bottlenecks in reaching such goals include navigating through large seas of data needed to support initiatives, ensuring the data is high quality, and keeping up with the latest industry standards.

4:30pm – 5:15pm

Telehealth: Both a Digital Divide and a Means of Health Equity

Telehealth has been shown to have comparable health outcomes in terms of patient-physician communication, and patient satisfaction and engagement. Nevertheless, the digital divide has exacerbated the social and economic factors that create barriers to health and well-being. It, therefore, maybe a social determinant of health. Such issues as decreased internet connectivity and a lack of Wi-Fi and video chat/webcam in both urban and rural areas can hinder the effectiveness of telehealth to its full capability, especially among communities of color, the poor and medically underserved. On the contrary, telehealth has the potential to become an important tool to address longstanding health inequities in historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. This session will explore the digital divide as a SDOH and how to strengthen existing healthcare and public health systems to allow for patient and community-centered approaches to care. Those developing and implementing telehealth solutions must make it a priority to partner with historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups to ensure that solutions are designed to be accessible and work well for all.

5:15pm

End of Day One

7:15am – 8:00am

Networking Breakfast

8:00am – 8:15am

Chairperson’s Remarks

8:15am – 9:00am

The Future of Nursing: Social Determinants of Health and Health Equity

Health equity cannot be achieved without nurses; their contribution is central to the delivery of healthcare. Nurses can improve outcomes for the underserved and can work to address the structural and institutional factors that produce health disparities. Nurses can use their interdisciplinary expertise and holistic approach to help develop and advocate for policies and programs that promote health equity. This session will explore why the role of nurses must focus on social determinants of health and health equity in the next decade and why they must be prioritized.

9:00am – 9:45am

Preparing for the Future of Health Equity

Amidst new healthcare regulations and market challenges, social determinants of health stand as one of the most important, but challenging, areas of interests for quality programs and regulators. Government agencies have enacted significant regulatory policies to expand equitable care to all members and continue to increase expectations from health plans. From the Star Ratings program to Medicaid managed care organization contracts, regulators have implemented new and creative ways of incentivizing health plans to deliver equitable care. The more financial performance becomes tied to health equity initiatives, the more important it is for health plans to account for social determinants of health to safeguard revenue. This session will explore how to prepare for the future of health equity, and what health plans need to understand about where regulations currently are, where they are headed and how plans can adapt to the upcoming changes.

9:45am – 10:15am

Networking & Refreshments Break

10:15am – 11:15am

Panel: Integrating Social Determinants of Health into Value-Based Care

The movement toward value-based care provides a significant opportunity to address social determinants of health (SDoH) while improving value and quality of care. Value-based care can allow greater flexibility in terms of what services are delivered while providing accountability for long-term sustainability and population health improvements. Although federal, state, and commercial payers are launching innovative new payment models addressing SDoH, questions remain regarding best practices for implementation, impact on cost and outcomes, and ability to scale and spread across different contexts under current policies. This session will explore the current landscape of payment reform initiatives addressing SDoH, challenges and opportunities related to implementation, policy implications and next steps so that states and payers can use value-based payment to encourage and promote addressing social needs.

11:15am – 12:00pm

Breaking Down Silos: How to Share Data to Improve the Health of People Experiencing Homelessness

Housing is a key social determinant of health. Stable housing can help maintain health and reduce unnecessary emergency room use and hospital admissions, while research indicates that addressing the health-related needs of people experiencing or at risk of homelessness is crucial to accessing and sustaining housing.

Because homelessness = exists on an unprecedented scale — purposeful collaborations between the health care and homeless systems of care are critical. Such efforts have taken a variety of forms, including whole person care pilot programs and collaborations aimed at improving care for those who frequently touch both the healthcare and homeless systems of care — while reducing the costs of the two systems so they can serve more people. This session will explore ways in which the housing and healthcare sectors are sharing data to better coordinate and support mutual clients within their communities.

12:00pm – 1:00pm

Luncheon

1:00pm – 1:45pm

How the Supply Chain Meets the Demand for Health Equity

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the world’s awareness of the strategic importance of the healthcare supply chain, perhaps more than any other event in history. Just as supply chain professionals collaborate today with clinicians to identify the best products to use in clinical care, so, too, can supply chain work with public health experts and community resources to optimize population health and minimize health disparities. This session will explore key determinants for resilient healthcare supply chains, and how organizational commitment and wise spending can ensure healthcare supply chain resilience.

1:45pm – 2:30pm

Ensuring Health Equity for LGBT Patients

The LGBT community is diverse. While L, G, B and T are usually tied together as an acronym that suggests homogeneity, each letter represents a wide range of people of different races, ethnicities, ages, socioeconomic status and identities. What binds them together as social and gender minorities are common experiences of stigma and discrimination, the struggle of living at the intersection of many cultural backgrounds and trying to be a part of each, and, specifically with respect to health are, a long history of discrimination and lack of awareness of health needs by health professionals. As a result, LGBT people face a common set of challenges in accessing culturally competent healthcare services and achieving the highest possible level of care. This session will explore LGBT concepts, terminology and demographics; discuss health disparities affecting LGBT groups; and outline steps clinicians and health care organizations can take to provide access to patient-centered care for their LGBT patients.

2:30pm – 3:15pm

Health Equity and Social Determinants of Health in Pediatrics: Balancing Mission and Financial Sustainability

With increasing recognition of the impact of poverty, racism and other social factors on child health, many pediatric health systems are undertaking interventions to address social determinants of health. Initiatives among mission-driven pediatric health systems to address social determinants of health are increasingly common despite funding challenges. Value-based payments, expansion of Medicaid funding resulting from policy changes and delivery system reform, along with health system philanthropy and operating revenues, will all be needed to meet mission-based goals of addressing social determinants of health while supporting financial sustainability. This session will explore these initiatives and recent developments in state and federal health policy impacting funding for these efforts.

3:15pm

Conference Concludes

3:30pm – 5:30pm

Workshop: Educating and Training Staff on the Principles of Health Equity

Rural providers and public health practitioners can benefit from opportunities to receive education and training on health equity. This session will focus on a range of topics, such as the historical basis of health inequities, implicit bias, cultural humility, culturally and linguistically appropriate services, and strategies for engaging with communities that have experienced inequities, among many others. Topics to be discussed will include:

- How to talk about health equity, such as with colleagues, community members, and other collaborators

- How to define key concepts of health equity — including any shared definitions for health equity used by the organization, partnership, coalition, or agency

- Understand the difference between health equity, health disparities, and the social determinants of health

- Increasing awareness of the root causes of health equity and the unique factors driving inequities in the community

- Building  capacity to engage with communities that experience health inequities

- Collecting accurate data from patients, such as race, ethnicity, and language data or social determinants of health assessments