Financing strategies to address the social determinants of health in Medicaid

This issue brief begins by describing the extent to which Medicaid beneficiaries experience certain social risk factors that affect health. It then discusses the three primary mechanisms—state plan benefits, contracts with managed care plans, and time-limited grants and waivers—that state Medicaid programs can use to deliver and finance SDOH interventions, as well as the statutory and regulatory limits on these uses of funds. We also discuss programmatic impediments that make it difficult to expand or sustain these approaches.