In focus: Creating pathways and partnerships to address patients’ social needs

Although health care professionals have long understood that social factors, including food insecurity and unstable housing, have an outsized effect on health, many have lacked the resources and financial incentives to intervene. This issue of Transforming Care looks at how new technologies and payment models can support efforts by health care providers and plans to assess patients’ nonmedical risks and work with nonprofit agencies, social services providers, and other community partners to help address them.