According to research published in in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ November 08, 2021 193 (44)), most family physicians now report that they engage in some degree of social intervention in the management of patients. However, outside of community health centres, social interventions are still not a routine part of primary care practice and are not yet considered “standard of care.”
To read more, visit: Implementing social interventions in primary care (CMAJ)
Key Points in the Research:
- Primary care–based social interventions offer an important means to mitigate threats to individual and community health posed by adverse social conditions.
- Effective interventions include those that target individual-level determinants, connections with community resources, community-focused partnerships and structures within health teams that affect equity.
- Accumulating evidence points to the positive impacts of social interventions on broad markers of health; however, most research in this area has focused on implementation and process measures, rather than outcomes.
- Some interventions require large, interdisciplinary health care resources to implement, but many are accessible to small group practices or individual providers.
Authors:
- Dr. Gary Bloch, St. Michael's Hospital Academic FHT
- Linda Rozmovits, independent qualitative health research consultant