There is an increasing awareness of the need to screen for a broad array of social drivers of health (SDOH) in the healthcare setting. Social drivers of health refer to the conditions in which people live, work, and play. SDOH are defined as external factors including social, economic, and educational factors as well as infrastructure and healthcare. SDOH can affect an individual’s health outcomes, functioning, and quality-of-life. Research shows health outcomes are influenced by various elements such as genes, health behaviors (e.g., smoking, diet, and exercise), social and environmental factors, and access to healthcare.
SDOH exists at the individual and community level. In recent years, healthcare organizations have begun assessing patients’ social needs to pilot interventions to help meet those needs. Organizations that take the time to learn about the communities where patients live, work, and play, have a better chance of helping patients make better health decisions by adapting recommendations to fit their lives.
ACCC has developed an educational initiative called Social Drivers of Health in Metastatic Breast Cancer. The goal of this work is to identify barriers to equitable access to metastatic breast cancer care and the impacts of social determinants of health for patients with metastatic breast cancer. ACCC seeks to determine whether and to what degree assessing and addressing social determinants of health is linked with selection of guideline-concordant treatment choices for patients with HR+ HER2- metastatic breast cancer; and to assess alignment of clinical practices with guideline recommendations for HR+ HER2- metastatic breast cancer in minoritized patients.
In this survey conducted in early 2024, 247 respondents across 42 states and Washington, DC, explored how social drivers of health (SDOH) impact access to guideline-concordant care for patients with metastatic breast cancer.
There is an increasing awareness of the importance of screening for social drivers of health (SDOH) for patients with cancer. Social drivers like income level and stable housing can impact a patient’s access to quality cancer care. To help multidisciplinary teams in oncology care screen for SDOH, ACCC has developed a screening tool to help identify potential SDOH factors that may hinder access to cancer treatment and clinical trial participation. In this episode, CANCER BUZZ speaks with Richard Martin III, MD, MPH, medical director of Health Equity and Community Engagement at Tennessee Oncology and Dana McDaniel, DNP, FNP-C, AOCNP, director of Oncology and Clinical Research at Mosaic Life Care about their experiences using the screening tool as part of ACCC’s pilot program.
Social determinants of health have been proven to impact access to care, but further delineation is necessary to describe their effect on treatment selection itself. To mitigate this knowledge gap, the Association of Cancer Care Centers (ACCC) sought to identify the impact that social determinants of health may have on guideline-concordant treatment selection in hormone receptor positive, HER2 negative, metastatic breast cancer and early breast cancer.
This project was made possible with support from Pfizer.
