Two new action guides give family physicians concrete steps they can take to advance health equity while providing high-quality, individualized care that improves health outcomes.
The new tools, Beyond the Surface: A Proactive Guide Series on Screening for Social Determinants of Health and The Anti-Racist Family Physician: A Guide to Making a Difference, are available at https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/the-everyone-project/toolkit/health-advocacy/anti-racism-and-social-determinants-of-health.html. These action guides, the latest resources from the AAFP’s EveryONE Project®, were created by the Academy with support from the AAFP Foundation and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.
“We cannot become a healthier nation without eliminating racial inequities in health care,” note the authors of The Anti-Racist Family Physician. Although the causes of these inequities are complex, the publications lay out steps toward health equity that physicians and their care teams can put into action now.
Screening for Social Determinants of Health
Beyond the Surface leads physicians through 4 steps to screen for the social determinants of health (SDOH) that affect patients’ health:
Taking a brief overview of SDOH screening
Preparing a practice for changes based on an “ask, identify, act” framework that the authors call “the easiest approach”
Implementing those changes with the help of tools selected for family physician practices
Reviewing the strengths and limitations of 6 screening tools
Making a Difference
The Anti-Racist Family Physician, which offers evidence-based actions to help create practices that counter the effects of racism, begins by examining the ramifications of racism on health disparities, the practice of medicine, the medical workforce, and research. It then details 5 strategies physicians can employ to improve both organizational practices and patient outcomes:
Reflection and education
Determining their patient population’s specific needs
Creating an intervention together with the population
Measuring the intervention’s effectiveness
Influencing policy makers and legislators
More From the EveryONE Project
The new action guides are part of a toolkit that helps members advocate for health equity, which is available at https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/the-everyone-project/toolkit/health-advocacy.html.
Earlier this year, the Academy developed a series of health policy briefs that offer evidence-based support for physician advocacy on food insecurity, gender pay inequity in medicine, considering health in all local and state policies, health literacy, housing instability, socioeconomic status, and transportation.
- © 2024 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.