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.

Over the past decade, ONC has worked with health information technology (health IT) developers, standards development organizations, healthcare providers, patient advocates, health information exchange (HIE) administrators, state public health agencies, and other stakeholders to advance an interoperable health IT infrastructure across the country. ONC has also worked to expand access to health IT solutions across the care continuum to support medical specialty care and sites of service.