Social drivers of health in pediatric perioperative care

Social drivers of health influence every stage of pediatric perioperative care, shaping access to surgery, anesthetic readiness, and recovery. Social conditions, reflecting the circumstances of a family’s daily life, and structural conditions, encompassing the systems and policies that shape those circumstances, contribute to missed appointments, delayed optimization, intraoperative vulnerability, and postoperative complications—outcomes not accounted for by physiology alone. Using the Gelberg–Andersen Behavioral Model for Vulnerable Populations, this Special Article synthesizes current evidence, outlines biologic and systemic pathways through which social drivers of health affect perioperative outcomes, and proposes strategies for integrating these insights into clinical practice and research.