What You Should Know:
– The Center for Health Affairs and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced it has established the world’s first and only Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Innovation Hub.
– The hub’s objective is to start locally and move globally to address structural racism and poverty that result in gun violence, behavioral health crises, and a myriad of other factors negatively impacting the health of local residents.
SDOH Challenges
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cleveland has the highest poverty rate among large U.S. cities. With more than 114,000 people living in poverty in 2019, including 37,700 children and nearly 12,000 adults, these individuals face daily challenges related to violence, lack of digital connections, housing, food, access to medical care and behavioral health providers, unemployment, and so much more. All of these economic and social conditions that influence health outcomes are known as SDOH, and their impact is often under-represented in traditional diagnoses.
Root causes of these SDOH challenges are structural racism and poverty; and The Center is committed to finding solutions for these very complex social and economic issues using next generation technology. Tackling SDOH challenges requires accurate and insightful data, which can be complex and costly to collect and analyze. The cloud capabilities will enable the rapid analysis of heterogenous data from hundreds of local partner organizations using AWS’s compute, storage, machine learning, and other services to determine patterns and indicators that will better inform health action and policies. The platform will analyze data that AWS does not have access to or control. The insights will be used by a consortium of commercial and public sector healthcare and research organizations.
SDoH Hub Background & Focus
The Center and individuals who represent local businesses, nonprofit organizations, government officials, community residents, and policymakers are serving as advisors to drive action informed by the data. Over time, the Hub will use learnings to address the impact of environmental factors on marginalized communities, the creation of jobs and training, and making investment decisions that focus on underserved neighborhoods and their residents. AWS has provided The Center with computing credits and technical expertise to advance the project.
Using data from local and global sources, the SDOH Hub is first addressing the behavioral health precursors to gun violence. The SDOH Hub will then find solutions in areas that include:
– Climate Change
– Access to Health Care
– Maternal and Infant Deaths
– Digital Connectivity
– Education and Workforce Development
– Entrepreneurship
– Urban Development (Smart Cities)
– Housing
– Transportation
