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Samantha Meklir

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Samantha Meklir's Latest Blog Posts

Hospitals Collect and Receive Social Needs Data, but Usage Varies

Samantha Meklir | July 31, 2023

If left unaddressed, the social needs experienced by an individual may lead to poor health outcomes and more time spent in hospitals and interacting with the health care system. Hospitals, therefore, are uniquely situated to help address social needs and mitigate social risk factors by screening for social needs, assisting with transitions of care, and making connections to social service organizations. According to a recent ONC analysis of data from the 2022 American Hospital Association (AHA) Information Technology Supplement Survey,

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

Samantha Meklir | 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

Samantha Meklir | 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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ONC Health IT Framework for Advancing SDOH Data Use and Interoperability

Samantha Meklir | June 17, 2021

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Addressing inequities in these conditions, driven in large part due to the root causes of poverty and racism, can be supported in part through the collection, documentation, reporting, access and use of SDOH data.

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Supporting Health IT for the Pediatric Care Continuum

Samantha Meklir | July 28, 2020

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.

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