Overview

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This session contains two 40 minute panels.

Social determinants of health (SDoH) quantify individual and neighbourhood-level characteristics that influence the health and healthcare of patients. Almost 80% of chronic disease is linked to four individual behaviours: tobacco use, inadequate physical activity, unhealthy diet, and alcohol misuse patterns. Yet these behaviours “display social patterning,” and as the World Health Organization (WHO) states, research shows that SDoH “can be more important than health care or lifestyle choices in influencing health, with studies suggesting that SDoH account for between 30-55% of health outcomes. In addition, estimates show that the contribution of sectors outside health to population health outcomes exceeds the contribution from the health sector.” SDoH measures may include statistics on income, food and housing insecurity, health insurance, crime, air and water quality, education, employment, and access to transportation, and others. SDoH may be collected on individuals in structured fashion through patient surveys, via a patient portal connected with the electronic health record (EHR) system, recorded into the EHR during patient registration, or documented by a clinician in an unstructured fashion in an EHR progress note during a patient visit. Individual-level SDoH capture may reflect systematic data collection on all patients at all visits or only within certain practice settings and circumstances where the SDoH issue is particularly relevant to patient management. SDoH may also be derived through neighborhood-level statistics assessed through government or social service agencies, collected at varying time intervals, and designed to reflect geographic areas from small census-block groups and tracts to larger zip code areas and county levels.

Informatics methods and efforts are needed to address the variety, availability, rigor, and potential biases of SDoH data. This panel will discuss the breath of SDoH measures, manners in which SDoH data are captured and recorded, implications for care and research including when they are not collected, specialized approaches to extract SDoH data from narrative data sources, conduct of analyses involving SDoH, and applications of the findings of these analyses towards improved clinical care, patient safety, and public health.

Health informatics and digital health solutions are central to reducing the carbon footprint of healthcare and responding to the health impacts of global heating. This panel will examine the role of health informatics in tackling climate change by reviewing the science about climate change and its impact on human health. It will then discuss the role of health informatics in mitigating the impact of health services on climate change, and in managing climate change triggered infectious diseases and environmental health risks.
The panel aims to:
1) improve understanding about role of health informatics and digital health solutions in addressing the causes and consequences of climate change;
2) transfer learnings about approaches to minimise the carbon footprint of digital health, and
3) identify gaps and areas for further work.

Speaker