Medical Students Screen for Social Determinants of Health: A Service Learning Model to Improve Health Equity

Medical schools are now required to address health disparities within their curriculum, with a recent emphasis on social determinants of health (SDOH). However, there is scant evidence that incorporating educational experiences around SDOH impacts health equity for patients. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique setting to engage students to address SDOH directly with patients.

The authors designed a service-learning experience in which medical students conducted a patient needs assessment survey by phone to assess SDOH in the domains of health care access, economic stability, and social cohesion. We drew descriptive statistics from a deidentified Excel database of call outcomes to quantify health care interactions and community resource referrals generated by callers.

The call outcomes revealed unmet health and social needs among the patient population and generated a substantial number of actions to improve health care access and awareness of community resources.

The results of this project show that employing medical students to engage with SDOH through action-oriented service learning positively impacts health care access and referrals to community resources. This initiative provides a flexible model to engage medical trainees in addressing health-related social needs that can be applied to a range of clinical settings and learner levels.