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The PhenX Toolkit: Measurement protocols for assessment of social determinants of health

Krzyzanowski MC, Ives CL, Jones NL, Entwisle B, Fernandez A, Cullen T, Darity W, Fossett M, Remington PL, Taualii M, Wilkins CH, Pérez-Stable EJ, Rajapakse N, Breen N, Zhang X, Maiese DR, Hendershot T, Mandal M, Hwang SY, Huggins W, Gridley L, Riley A, Ramos EM, Hamilton CM.
Am J Prev Med

Introduction: Social determinants are structures and conditions in the biological, physical, built, and social environments that affect health, social and physical functioning, health risk, quality-of-life, and health outcomes. The adoption of recommended, standard measurement protocols for social determinants of health (SDoH) will advance the science of minority health and health disparities research and provide standard SDoH protocols for inclusion in all studies with human participants.

Methods: A PhenX (consensus measures for Phenotypes and eXposures) Working Group (WG) of SDoH experts was convened from October 2018 to May 2020 and followed a well-established consensus process to identify and recommend SDoH measurement protocols. The PhenX Toolkit contains data collection protocols suitable for inclusion in a wide range of research studies. The recommended SDoH protocols were shared with the broader scientific community to invite review and feedback prior to being added to the Toolkit.

Results: Nineteen SDoH protocols were released in the PhenX Toolkit (https://www.phenxtoolkit.org) in May 2020 to provide measures at the individual and structural levels for built and natural environments, structural racism, economic resources, employment status, occupational health and safety, education, environmental exposures, food environment, health and health care, and sociocultural community context.

Conclusions: Promoting adoption of well-established SDoH protocols can enable consistent data collection and facilitate comparing and combining studies, with the potential to increase their scientific impact.

Cox LA, Hwang S, Haines J, Ramos EM, McCarty CA, Marazita ML, Engle ML, Hendershot T, Pan HH, Hamilton CM. Using the phenx toolkit to select standard measurement protocols for your research study Curr Protoc. 2021;1(5):e149. DOI:10.1002/cpz1.149.
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Publication year
Resource type
Tools & Toolkits
Outcomes
Process
Screening research
Yes
Social Determinant of Health
Built Environment
Economic Security
Education/Literacy
Employment
Food/Hunger
Health Care Access