Incorporating social determinants of health data from health care partners and community-based organizations into a common data architecture

Integrating social determinants of health (SDoH) data across health systems and community-based organizations is essential to understand social needs and their relationship to health outcomes. In 2018, the Clinical and Community Data Initiative (CODI) was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to explore the feasibility of linking patient-level longitudinal data across programs, settings, and systems in Colorado through the Colorado Health Observation Regional Data Service (CHORDS). CHORDS is a distributed data network in Colorado that has developed flexible infrastructure to house SDoH data using a common data model. Through CODI, CHORDS effectively links SDoH data from health care and community data partners using privacy-preserving record linkage. This report describes a series of modifications implemented by CHORDS and its network participants to accurately capture and utilize SDoH data, including steps taken to conform disparate data from health care and community-based organizations into a common data model.