User:Aamna11/Screening (medicine)

Screening for social determinants of health (new section under Examples Section)
The social determinants of health are the economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status. Those conditions may have adverse effects on their health and well-being. To mitigate those adverse effects, certain health policies like the United States Affordable Care Act (2010) gave increased traction to preventative programs, such as those that routinely screen for social determinants of health. Screening is believed to a valuable tool in identifying patients' basic needs in a social determinants of health framework so that they can be better served.

Policy Background in the United States
When established in the United States, the Affordable Care Act was able to bridge the gap between community-based health and healthcare as a medical treatment, leading to programs that screened for SDH. The Affordable Care Act established several services with an eye for social determinants or an openness to more diverse clientele, such as Community Transformation Grants, which were delegated to the community in order to establish "preventative community health activities" and "address health disparities".

Clinical Programs
Social determinants of health include social status, gender, ethnicity, economic status, education level, access to services, education, immigrant status, upbringing, and much, much more. Several clinics across the United States have employed a system in which they screen patients for certain risk factors related to social determinants of health. In such cases, it is done as a preventative tool in order to mitigate any detrimental effects of prolonged exposure to certain risk factors, or to simply begin remedying the adverse effects already faced by certain individuals. They can be structured in different ways, for example, online or in person, and yield different outcomes based on the patient's responses. Some programs, like the FIND Desk at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, employ screening for social determinants of health in order to connect their patients with social services and community resources that may provide patients greater autonomy and mobility.