New ACAP Center Aims to Support Social Determinants of Health Efforts

The Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) has initiated a center designed to spur new ideas about how to address social determinants of health, according to a press release that HealthPayerIntelligence received by email.

“Longstanding racial inequities cannot improve without meaningfully addressing the social factors underlying them,” Margaret A. Murray, chief executive officer of ACAP, shared in the press release. 

“Safety Net Health Plans have worked in communities across the United States to address factors that shape their members’ health for decades. This new center creates unique opportunities to showcase what works, share that knowledge with others, and support a healthier future for people with low incomes, whose wellbeing has too often been held back by their environment.”

ACAP’s goal is to offer a platform to highlight best practices related to social determinants of health. Community-affiliated health plans’ members tend to be from underserved populations with low incomes, the press release pointed out.

The center will provide resources including research, funding opportunities, and policy updates related to social determinants of health initiatives. It will rely on the input of ACAP’s own members—74 safety net health plans—and will pull on their experiences, academic resources, and policy involvement.

Subjects that the center plans to cover include housing instability, food insecurity, lack of transportation access, and care disparities. The center will produce roundtable educational events, policy reports, and market research that focus on social determinants of health issues.

Spring Street Exchange will administer the center, which will serve not just payers but also policymakers who are working on legislation related to social determinants of health.

According to the ACAP Center for SDOH Innovation website, the center plans to be a trusted authority on social determinants of health issues. Its aim is to advocate for lower-income individuals and those with severe healthcare needs. And the center wants to facilitate best practices.

At the time of publication, all of the center’s events, policy, and research information required a member login. Users can submit a request for access.

Other payers have taken steps to offer support to healthcare stakeholders as they address social determinants of health. In an issue brief, Humana outlined the policy landscape around social determinants of health and shared the payer’s social determinants of health data standardization process.

Employers are also becoming more aware of their own roles in addressing social determinants of health. 

The Northeast Business Group on Health released a report to help employers build their social determinants of health strategies effectively. Conversations with health plans and vendor partners about the social determinants of health data that the employer collects, assessing health equity in their existing benefits, and supporting their employees’ healthcare literacy were just a couple of strategies that the group recommended to employers.

Robust social determinants of health strategies can be particularly essential for effective employer and payer wellness programming. 

A National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions report recommended gathering data including social determinants of health data in order to create well-informed wellness programs. After that, payers and employers should prioritize subpopulations, design and implement interventions based on the data for those targeted populations, and then measure outcomes.

As payers strive to improve social determinants of health strategies, collaborative efforts may be the key to progress.