Moving from social risk assessment and identification to intervention and treatment
Acad Pediatr
Clinical care seeks to match the right patient to the right treatment. Clinicians use histories and physicals to guide assessment and to determine diagnosis and management plans. This pattern of assessment, identification, and treatment typically focuses on symptoms and diseases. However, mounting evidence suggests that social determinants of health (SDH) may be just as, if not more, relevant to clinical outcomes than many of the medical or biologic determinants that often dominate our focus. It is therefore natural to consider how we might reliably and effectively integrate assessment, identification, and treatment of the SDH into clinical practice. This edition of Academic Pediatrics contains three articles highlighting different aspects of social risk assessment and identification with some, but more limited, attention paid to the critical next step: treatment.
Beck AF, Klein MD. Moving from social risk assessment and identification to intervention and treatment. Acad Pediatr. 2016;16(2):97-98. PMID: 26791277. DOI: 10.1016/j.acap.2016.01.001.