Bridging the social determinants of health to medical care at a Latino community health care center

Just Health Action (JHA) advocates for reducing health inequities that result from social, political, economic, and cultural factors (social determinants of health (SDOH)). Through a social justice lens, JHA teaches workshops that reviews the evidence and then facilitates discussion and consensus on how individuals and communities can take action on these root causes. For 3 years, JHA has taught a population health workshop series to AmeriCorps volunteers at Sea Mar Community Health Centers (Sea Mar) in Seattle, Washington. Sea Mar is a community-based organization committed to providing comprehensive health and human services to diverse communities, specializing in service to Latinos. Sea Mar AmeriCorps volunteers have a one year commitment to work in traditional behavioral change programs such as smoking cessation, lead exposure, diabetes, drug and alcohol addiction, and literacy. The workshop series teaches the volunteers about the SDOH, health disparities, and health advocacy, as well as to give them tools to take action on improving population health beyond the traditional individual health behavior paradigm. This presentation covers the most asked volunteer question: “How do we bridge SDOH concepts into our health care work”? We describe how a Sea Mar doctor (Perez) shows the volunteers how he operationalizes the SDOH with his patients. We present his unique patient questionnaire that recognizes that the SDOH (e.g., employment, education) carry more weight than curative medicine with his patients. We give examples of case-based scenarios where volunteers have brainstormed with Perez and each other on how to incorporate the SDOH into their work.