In this issue…

  • Webinar: Educating the Patient For Safe and Equitable Care
  • SDOH in Med Ed: Hot Topics & WIP: SDOH and MED-Tech: How do we keep students connected to communities during healthcare’s digital revolution?
  • Blog: Medical / Health Humanities and Social Determinants of Health in Pre-Clinical Pathways to Clinical Education: An Outcomes Study​
  • Resource of the Month: Gender-Affirming Care With Transgender and Genderqueer Patients: A Standardized Patient Case
  • What’s the latest? News, Conferences & Events from Around the Country

The National Collaborative for Education to Address the Social Determinants of Health (NCEAS) was originally a HRSA-funded Academic Unit for Primary Care Training and Enhancement. The mission of the NCEAS is to prepare primary care clinicians with the expertise and leadership to address the social determinants of health (SDOH).

Do you have relevant SDOH resources, curricula, or evaluation tools to share? Please send them to us at contact@sdoheducation.org

Webinar

Educating the Patient For Safe and Equitable Care

Most health equity approaches involve education for individual patient care providers or professional development at the organizational level.  These avenues are needed to propel change. However, it is also important to empower the patient toward the elimination of health disparities. This session will discuss opportunities for organizations and healthcare workers to elevate the voice of the patient for their own safe and equitable care through meaningful community engagement, access to useful information, tools, and resources, and awareness of legislation (current and proposed) that increases the agency patients have toward the elimination of SDOH and inequitable healthcare.

Register Here

SDOH in Med Ed: Hot Topics & WIP

SDOH and MED-Tech: How do we keep students connected to communities during healthcare’s digital revolution?

The shock of the pandemic challenged the healthcare system to provide quality care to patient populations that were unable to access traditional healthcare settings. What resulted were clinics, hospitals, and other service providers pivoting to a reliance on digital systems to facilitate virtual patient visits and remote monitoring of chronic disease. As a result, post-pandemic undergraduate and graduate medical education has emphasized student exposure to these technological interventions. These technologies have expanded the reach of academic health centers to several underserved populations.  Left unresolved, however, is how we increase students’ and providers’ understanding of the lived experiences of their patients and of their patents’ communities. Several medical schools have included community-based experiences in their curriculum to reinforce learning objectives related to the social determinants of health. It is unclear, nevertheless, how these community-based experiences will coexist in a landscape of increasing reliance on digital solutions to interact with patient populations and, in some instances, to address the social determinants of health.

Click Here for More Information

Blog

Medical / Health Humanities and Social Determinants of Health in Pre-Clinical Pathways to Clinical Education: An Outcomes Study

A small but growing number of studies show that medical and health humanities education develops skills in areas like structural competence, antiracism in healthcare, communication, and leadership (Petty, Metzl, and Keeys 2017; Hirshfield, Yudkowsky, and Park 2019; Pitcher et al. 2022; Balhara, Ehmann, and Irvin 2022). However, there is still much to learn about the longer-term effects of health humanities education during the pre-clinical years on learners’ engagement with social determinants of health (SDOH). Medical / health humanities is an interdisciplinary field that examines illness, medical systems, and care through the methods and materials of the humanities, adjacent social sciences, and the arts. We designed a study to qualitatively assess the longitudinal impacts of medical and health humanities methods on pre-clinical students’ engagement with SDOH. The students were participants in an annual summer healthcare internship program with seminars covering SDOH and health disparities through a health humanities framework. This blog article describes the program and study results, closing with key insights about long-term impacts of health humanities in health equity education.

Read More Here

Resource of the Month

Gender-Affirming Care With Transgender and Genderqueer Patients: A Standardized Patient Case

This curriculum, from MedEd Portal, describes the use of a standardized patient (SP) case to educate third-year medical students on gender-affirming care with transgender and genderqueer patients. In the curriculum, students are asked to provide a new patient history with the SP, who has come to clinic to establish primary care (i.e., student not informed prior to the case that their LGBTQ+ clinical skills were being assessed).

View Resource Here

What’s the Latest?

News, Conferences, and Upcoming Event
  • US maternal mortality rate declines, but disparities remain, new CDC data shows | Read Here
  • Costs of social drivers of health; fast on their feet; cultural contributions – Morning Medical Update | Read Here
  • Using a Global Public Health Equity Lens | Read Here
  • August 1-3, 2024: Course | RISE for Equity: Reflect, Inspire, Strengthen & Empower 2024 | Washington DC | Details
  • October 6-8, 2024: Conference | The 9th Annual National Summit On The Social Drivers Of Health | Baltimore, MD | Details
  • December 2-4, 2024: Conference | Social Determinants of Health Policy Forum  | Washington DC | Details

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