From incentives to outcomes: A framework for implementing and evaluating social needs interventions

Addressing social determinants or drivers of health is key to improving child health outcomes and promoting health equity, but it remains unclear how pediatric hospitals can most effectively identify and address families’ social needs. In recent years, the National Academy of Sciences, the Joint Commission, the National Commission for Quality Assurance, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services have all issued guidelines or requirements that support and incentivize social care integration, including quality measures around social needs screening and intervention. As a result, a growing number of hospitals have rapidly implemented social needs screening and referral programs. It is, therefore, critical to establish robust standards and metrics for evaluating these programs aimed at assessing and addressing families’ unmet social needs, so that less successful interventions can be iteratively improved, and more successful interventions can be expanded and scaled with sustainability.