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Jawanna Henry

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Jawanna Henry's Latest Blog Posts

Navigating Social Determinants of Health Data Exchange: Insights from ONC’s SDOH Information Exchange Learning Forum

Jawanna Henry | February 7, 2024

Last year, ONC wrapped up the SDOH Information Exchange Learning Forum, a series of webinars focused on social determinants of health (SDOH) information exchange. The sessions are part of our ongoing work to engage and empower communities to advance SDOH interoperability consistent with the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions to improve health and well-being by addressing SDOH. The sessions built upon earlier ONC-supported activities including the development of an SDOH Information Exchange Toolkit.

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Coming in Hot! TEFCA Will Soon Be Live and Add Support for FHIR-Based Exchange

Jawanna Henry | November 3, 2023

In January 2022, ONC and The Sequoia Project, serving as ONC’s Recognized Coordinating Entity® (RCETM) organization, released the Trusted Exchange Framework and Version 1 of the Common Agreement. One year later, six organizations became candidate Qualified Health Information NetworksTM (QHINsTM) and committed to complete “onboarding” and “go live” by the end of 2023 – we are still on target!

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FHIRed-SHIP: An approach to Health Equity by Design for 21st Century Healthcare

Jawanna Henry | March 2, 2023

Complete and accurate information on a patient’s social determinants of health (SDOH), including specific needs related to food, housing, and transportation insecurity, can help their clinicians and social services providers take a more holistic approach to an individual’s health and well-being. In order to meet demand for an extensive number of SDOH use cases, the healthcare ecosystem is working intensely to mature SDOH data exchange standards. In parallel, it is important for continued investment in the use of these standards to test them out and to develop innovative methods that can enhance the comprehensiveness of health IT systems and improve care referrals and bi-directional exchange across organizations.

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Is Health IT Ready for Social Determinants of Health-Focused Clinical Decision Support?

Jawanna Henry | February 15, 2023

In a brief titled The Feasibility of Social Determinants of Health Clinical Decision Support, ONC explores how clinical practice guidelines that include social determinants of health (SDOH) factors present an opportunity to advance health equity and improve health outcomes. A standardized approach to clinical decision support (CDS) using SDOH factors can enable clinical practice guidelines to become part of routine care delivery. Such an approach has the potential for broad implementation in a variety of settings and with various systems.

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Moving Standards to Support SDOH Data Capture from the Sandbox to Production

Jawanna Henry | October 27, 2022

ONC is working alongside Health Level Seven International (HL7®) and with a wide range of partners from health care, government (federal and states), community-based organizations, developers, providers, and industry stakeholders to launch a national Gravity Project Pilots Affinity Group. This new group will pilot the SDOH Clinical Care FHIR Implementation Guide (SDOH CC IG) as a way to further the development and adoption of social determinants of health (SDOH) standards.  Additionally,

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