Integrating Social Determinants in Decision-Making Processes for Health: Insights from Conceptual Frameworks-the 3-D...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Policy
• Health Equity

Background:

• Social determinants of health (SDOH) provide a comprehensive approach to understanding and addressing health outcomes.
• Decision-makers often struggle to recognize and act on SDOH, hindering population health improvement, as evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore literature on decision-making processes influencing health.
• To identify conceptual approaches for integrating social determinants of health data into policy and practice.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review of conceptual approaches to health decision-making.
• Identification and summarization of frameworks, models, and theories relevant to policy stages.
• Analysis of how SDOH data can be incorporated into decision-making processes.

Main Results:

• Nine conceptual approaches were identified, highlighting the critical roles of context, actors, and health issue type in dynamic health decision-making.
• Most approaches implicitly support the use of SDOH data.
• Two key strategies for explicit integration include enhancing problem visibility/credibility and using SDOH for broader stakeholder engagement.

Conclusions:

• Social determinants of health data offer opportunities for targeted interventions by addressing modifiable risk factors.
• Further development of people-centered, evidence-informed decision-making tools is needed to explicitly integrate SDOH data.
• Enhanced integration of SDOH data can improve population health outcomes and health equity.