UC Berkeley

Health systems face increasing pressure to improve population health by addressing health related social needs such as adequate housing, transportation, or food insecurity. Current evidence around these initiatives is still nascent. One common intervention to address health related social needs is case management. There is need to better understand the holistic impacts of case management, the role of specific case management program components, and the effects of social needs interventions implemented as distinct activities. The three papers that comprise this dissertation examine social needs interventions from different angles. The first paper uses a rigorously designed, large-scale health and social needs case management program to identify whether case management services improved vaccination rates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The second paper builds on the same case management program to understand whether housing deposits, a unique program benefit, impacted health services use. The third paper analyzes whether hospital activities to address social needs are associated with better quality of care. Collectively, these papers suggest that health system efforts to address social needs hold promise yet may require continued tailoring for specific patient populations and local communities.