Health Systems Archive

By Austin Frakt The community of scholars (including some of us on this project) and the health care industry have been using “social determinants of health” to mean so many things that it has lost its original meaning. Sometimes precise definitions don’t matter too much if everyone knows what is meant from context. But I Continue reading [...]

Considering how much money we spend on health care in the U.S., we might hope that we allocate a good chunk of it toward evaluating the impact of the health policies we have in place. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Austin Frakt explores U.S. health policy evaluation (or lack thereof) in one of his recent Continue reading [...]

By Kate Raphael In other blog posts, we’ve discussed U.S. health care spending and outcomes. In short, we spend a lot more on medical care than other high-income countries, yet our health outcomes are often worse. We also spend a lot of money on social programs, which have been shown to be associated with improved health outcomes. It makes Continue reading [...]

By Austin Frakt Social determinants of health comes up from time to time in health policy news or as the subject of reports from health policy-focused organizations. Here are quotes from four stories or reports that caught my eye recently. 1. Investing in Interventions That Address Non-Medical, Health-Related Social Needs, The National Academies Press, August 2019. Continue reading [...]

By Austin Frakt The Drivers of Health meeting in Detroit on September 11 focused on the research and research gaps in the connection between health and housing (presented by Roshanak Mehdipanah of the University of Michigan) and education (presented by Adriana Lleras-Muney of UCLA). The meeting wrapped up with a panel discussion including those two scholars and Robert Gordon, Director Continue reading [...]

By Prosper Okonkwo, Research Associate in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health HIV diagnosis in Sub Saharan Africa in the nineties and early 2000s was literally a death sentence. In this post, Dr. Prosper Okonkwo looks at how treatment for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria has changed since the Continue reading [...]

By Kate Raphael In one of his recent Health Care Triage videos, Aaron Carroll calls attention to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association that supposedly tells us something new about plant-based diets and health. In this study, cardiovascular and all-cause mortality were the primary outcomes measured, and the authors found that Continue reading [...]

By Austin Frakt As I read more of the social determinants of health-related literature, I’m noticing a frequent theme: we don’t have enough information to guide decision making. For example, Kali Thomas and colleagues interviewed representatives from 17 Medicare Advantage plans (collectively capturing 65 percent of the Medicare Advantage market) about the importance of addressing social determinants Continue reading [...]

HGHI And BMJ Release Collection of Articles Exploring Barriers to UHC  Universal health coverage (UHC) is priority on the global health agenda. Yet simply prioritizing UHC without answering fundamental underlying questions will lead to the inefficient use of scare resources and little improvement in health and wellbeing. In response, the Harvard Global Health Institute and Continue reading [...]

The following is an interview with Len M. Nichols, Ph.D., Director, Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics, Professor of Health Policy, College of Health and Human Services, George Mason University. Austin Frakt: What do you think are the top three most important health-related social needs? Len Nichols: The top three health-related social needs are housing, Continue reading [...]