Healthcare facilities can meet the healthcare needs of their patients by providing preventive services like vaccinations, screenings, and routine check-ups to detect and address health issues early on. By providing proper health education services, they can offer guidance on healthy living, disease prevention, and self-care. They also support patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension through ongoing management programs.
Introducing the Health Leads program could significantly improve a facility’s ability to keep people healthy by addressing social factors. Although approaches vary from centralized call centers to clinic-based programs, most begin with health care system staff gathering information on social and economic hardships through patient-level screening, which can help uncover challenging patient or household circumstances related to topics such as threatened eviction, food insecurity, or limited transportation access (Gottlieb et al., 2018). By connecting patients with community resources, Health Leads can help resolve issues like food insecurity and inadequate housing, which are critical for overall health but often neglected in traditional medical care. Utilizing college students as advocates provides a motivated and cost-effective workforce, thereby expanding the facility’s ability to address non-medical needs.
Reference:
Gottlieb, L. M., Francis, D. E., & Beck, A. F. (2018). Uses and Misuses of Patient- and Neighborhood-level Social Determinants of Health Data. The Permanente journal, 22, 18–078. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/18-078
