The Vital Role of Health Care Payers in Addressing Social Determinants of Health to Advance Equity
More and more, policymakers recognize that effectively addressing patients’ social needs (such as housing instability or lack of access to healthy food) is essential to advancing health equity, improving population health, and managing health care costs. The significant challenge of comprehensively addressing social needs requires action, innovation, and collaboration from a broad range of stakeholders, including public and private health care payers. Payers can be an important part of the solution by changing how they pay providers that treat patients with social needs and by partnering with social service organizations. Although it is difficult work, a number of payers have been at the forefront of designing and deploying policies that encourage health care providers to help address health-related social needs.
Mathematica held a webinar on September 15, 2021, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. ET with policy experts who discussed the following:
- Ways that payers can change how they pay for health care to advance health equity by helping providers better address patients’ health-related social needs
- Factors that impede or facilitate use of targeted payment incentives to address social determinants of health
- Lessons learned from the early implementation of payment policies addressing social determinants of health
Speakers included the following:
- Sinsi Hernández-Cancio, Vice President for Health Justice, National Partnership for Women & Families (moderator)
- Chris DeMars, Transformation Center Director and Delivery Systems Innovation Office Interim Director, Oregon Health Authority
- Len Nichols, Health Policy Center Non-Resident Fellow, Urban Institute
- Kara Odom Walker, Executive Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer, Nemours Children’s Health
- Toni Abrams Weintraub, Researcher, Mathematica
- Deliya Wesley, Senior Director, Health Equity, Mathematica
