What's the problem?

Social needs - like hunger, housing insecurity, and social isolation - account for 60% of preventable disease. But clinicians lack the data, time and confidence to effectively deploy solutions that address these needs. This is a barrier to better care and improved population health.

How does it work?

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Launch

We launch detailing campaigns with partners by educating a select group of residents and community-based organization staff about social determinants science. Then we train them to influence clinicians using the same 1-on-1, outreach "detailing" techniques used by pharmaceutical sales representatives.

Learn

 Community-based trainees use "detailing" techniques and technology to visit clinicians and assess their individual learning needs. Over a series of brief visits, they then offer tailored data and resources that care teams use to demonstrably improve care for patients with unmet social needs.  

Improve

Using this approach, we have tripled the confidence of both community detailers and clinicians to improve the upstream conditions that make people sick in the first place. That means more social need screenings, better social service referrals, fewer hospital readmissions and ER visits, and better health.  

Get results

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Clinicians

Increase joy

Clinician burnout is strongly associated with the perceived lack of support to address patients' social needs. With Community Health Detailing, you'll deploy proven outreach techniques and tools to improve clinicians' upstream efficacy and impact without taking time out of their busy schedules..

Health Systems & Payers

Improve value

With value-based reforms, addressing health-related social needs for patients is increasingly important for the Triple Aim. With Community Health Detailing, you'll reduce waste and improve value by deploying social determinants programs and tools more efficiently and effectively.     .

Public Health & Social Services

Invest upstream

Health begins upstream - where we live, work, eat and play - but a disproportionate share of funds and resources are trapped downstream.  With Community Health Detailing, healthcare payers help correct this imbalance by paying community organizations and residents to improve the impact of upstream efforts.    

How we started

A few years ago, nearly one hundred 12th graders at a high school in south central Los Angeles received academic credit to participate in our first pilot of Community Health Detailing. What the students accomplished surprised everyone, including themselves.

Students learned about social determinants through a participatory curriculum. Through phone calls and a web platform, they found, vetted, and mapped local resources to address social needs. Then they educated doctors at UCLA through brief "detailing" visits. 

The results? Student "detailers" nearly tripled the self-reported confidence of UCLA doctors to address their patients' health-related social needs. In the process, students tripled their own knowledge and confidence to address health-related social needs in their families and neighborhoods.

They learned. They detailed. They transformed healthcare professionals, and themselves.

You can improve the care of patients with health-related social needs.

"Meaningful clinician and community engagement is vital to the success of cross-sector partnerships that address health-related social needs. Without clinicians on board, efforts to move healthcare upstream stall and patients' social needs go unaddressed. At the same time, it can be challenging to engage community residents and organizations as champions, rather than just as beneficiaries, of healthcare transformation.
As we shift to value-based care and social determinants, we must do better. Community Health Detailing can help." 

- Rishi Manchanda MD MPH, HealthBegins.
Author, "The Upstream Doctors"