Understanding the Whole Person Provides the Whole Picture

Looking beyond the usual health metrics

In the healthcare space, it’s easy to start and stop conversations around the topic of ‘health’ at the physical level. It makes sense: physical health has readily available numbers that are easy to measure—blood pressure, cholesterol levels, joint mobility, you name it. These clinical factors are important, no doubt. But if we really want to help people lead healthier lives, we need to expand our focus beyond just the physical symptoms.

To understand the whole person, you must consider social determinants of health (SDOH)—the things that happen in society that determine our quality of life—such as housing, transportation, or income. Combining SDOH with clinical health factors provides a clear overview of really what makes the person think the way they think and act the way they act and allows you to understand what impacts their quality of life.

The real-life impact of social factors

Think about factors like having a safe place to live, reliable transportation, or enough nutritious food. These aren’t just nice-to-haves; they fundamentally shape a person’s health. If someone doesn’t have a stable roof over their head or struggles to put food on the table, it doesn’t matter how perfectly we manage their diabetes or arthritis—their overall well-being is still likely to take a hit. And let’s not forget about mental health, which often gets tangled up in these social factors.

Lessons from my military experience

During my 20 years in the military, I would see teams of doctors focus on the physical health attributes of service members, but nobody really focused on those social factors. Did the young people living on base have transportation to get to where they needed to go to have a social life? Did they have enough food? Did they have families at home, and did they make enough money to support them? As suicide rates continued to climb to six times that of the civilian population, it became apparent that a lot of those external social factors—combined with physical health factors—were a driving force.

How a Unified Care Exchange can make a difference

But here’s the thing: these lessons aren’t just about veterans; they apply to everyone. By understanding not only the clinical issues but also the social determinants threatening personal stability such as transportation, food, and housing we can piece together a more complete picture of people’s lives.

This is a gap that can be filled with a comprehensive information exchange—like our Unified Care Exchange. By pulling together data from both social and clinical angles, we can shift healthcare from being a reactive service to something more proactive. It helps us spot when someone might be headed toward risk before they hit a crisis point, ensuring we provide support when it’s needed most. It creates that important nexus point where physical, social, and mental health begin to come together.

Picture someone living in Colorado, for example, who is facing transportation challenges. They don’t have a car and/or don’t live in an area with reliable public transit and face a barrier to getting any kind of care they might need. However, with an integrated, data-driven approach, issues like those I just listed could be intercepted or proactively addressed. Linking social data (like a lack of transport) with their health data, we’re in a better position to offer assistance before these challenges grow into bigger, more stressful problems.

In the end, combining social determinants with clinical data not only offers a more complete perspective of the person, but it changes healthcare from a system that reacts to problems into one that anticipates and prevents them. As health and human services leaders, it’s up to us to start considering different types of care from different angles and start laying the groundwork for healthier and happier lives.

Learn more about Unified Care Exchange

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