Local Public Health Strategies for Addressing Social Determinants of Health-Analysis of Recent Community Health...

The Public Health 3.0 (PH3.0) framework encourages local health departments (LHDs) to address the social determinants of health (SDOHs) that impact health equity.

This study sought to understand how often LHDs are working to address SDOH, which SDOHs are most often being addressed, as well as the mix of strategies that have been proposed to address this work.

We reviewed recent Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs) to analyze the current involvement of LHDs in addressing SDOH.

CHIPs published from 2020.

Accredited LHDs from across the United States (n = 80).

We developed a qualitative guidebook to characterize CHIP strategies based on the SDOH domain they addressed and the strategic mechanism they proposed.

Across our entire sample, CHIPs were roughly 1.5 times more likely to address Health Care Access than Food Insecurity and Access to Healthy Food (65%), Neighborhood Infrastructure (61%), or Affordable Housing (65%), and they were 3 to 4 times more likely to address Health Care Access than Safe Housing (23%), Education Access and Quality (31%), or Economic Stability (24%). Across all major domains, a few concerned policy changes and a handful focused on improving systems or developing the built environment. Most strategies focused on service provision through events or the education of the public and professionals on health-related topics.

The results of this study demonstrate that not all SDOHs are addressed equally by LHDs within their CHIPs. There is significant variation in how SDOHs are addressed along at 2 dimensions: first, in the likelihood that a CHIP addresses the domain and, second, in the mechanism by which each domain is addressed. Practically, the list of strategies we documented from the 80 CHIPs included in our sample may serve as the basis for strategies that other communities may wish to consider when addressing SDOH.