Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 4, 2025
Universal Screening for Prevention of Reading, Writing, and Math Disabilities in Spanish
Published on: July 18, 2020
Benefits of a Universal Intervention in Pediatric Medical Homes to Identify and Address Health-Related Social Needs:
MaryCatherine Arbour1, Placidina Fico1, Sidney Atwood1
1Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital (M Arbour, P Fico, and A Atwood), Boston, Mass.
Objective:
Compare rates of identification of families with health-related social needs (HRSN) and connection to resources by targeted versus universal, pediatric clinic-based interventions.
Methods:
This observational cohort study included 1677 families that received care (January 2017-May 2020) at 8 pediatric medical homes in 3 states implementing Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone (DULCE)-a universal, evidence-based intervention that addresses HRSN for families with infants. We divided the cohort into 2 groups using 4 common risk criteria in targeted programs serving families with infants; 862 families had no high-risk characteristics (Risk Criteria Absent [RCA]); 815 families had high-risk characteristics (Risk Criteria Present [RCP]). We compared both groups by prevalence of HRSN and connection to supports and estimated the performance of high-risk criteria to identify HRSN.
Results:
DULCE identified 990 families with HRSN, compared to an estimated 274 families, if a risk-targeted approach had been used. More than half of RCA families had HRSN, 11% used resources at enrollment, and 42.5% accessed resources through DULCE. Simultaneously, 68.8% of RCP families had ongoing HRSN although 46.0% used resources at enrollment; 63.9% accessed additional resources through DULCE. Commonly used risk criteria had a sensitivity of 55.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 52.2%-58.5%), specificity of 61.1% (95% CI, 57.2%-64.9%), positive predictive value of 68.8% (95% CI, 65.4%-72.0%), and negative predictive value of 46.9% (95% CI, 43.5%-50.4%).
Conclusions:
Risk criteria commonly used to identify families for targeted interventions are imperfect proxies for HRSN. Universal, medical home-based approaches can play a key role in supporting families with infants.
