How to scale the integration of social care into health care: Ideas for research and practice

Over the past decade, the health care sector has given growing attention to the social risk factors that affect patients’ health. The COVID-19 pandemic brought even more consideration to these influences because we witnessed an exacerbation of existing socioeconomic disparities and their effects on morbidity and mortality. As such, screening patients or their families for social risk factors, including but not limited to food insecurity, housing instability, and unreliable transportation, and providing referrals to community resources is becoming common practice in health care settings across the United States. Yet, little research has evaluated the potential effect of these systems external to highly controlled trials.