Measuring Social Determinants of Health Using the PhenX Toolkit

February 1, 2022

Efforts to address disparities in health outcomes can hinge on how we measure social determinants of health (SDOH). This session will present the PhenX Toolkit for measuring SDOH. The PhenX Toolkit is a Web-based catalog of recommended measurement protocols, selected by experts to include in studies with human participants. We’ll discuss the rationale behind the PhenX SDOH measures, processes for utilization, and examples of recommended SDOH indicators and protocols, with particular emphasis on indicators of economic resources and other structural factors.

Paula Braveman, MD, MPH is Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Director of the Center for Health Equity at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). For more than 25 years, Dr. Braveman has studied and published extensively on health equity and the social determinants of health, and has worked to bring attention to these issues in the U.S. and internationally. Her research has focused on measuring, documenting, understanding, and addressing socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, particularly in maternal and infant health. During the 1990s she collaborated with World Health Organization staff in Geneva to develop a global initiative on equity in health and health care. She has been the Research Director for a national commission on the social determinants of health in the U.S. supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with local, state, federal, and international health agencies to see rigorous research translated into practice with the goal of achieving greater equity in health. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and has served on the Advisory Council of the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities of NIH.

Alicia Fernandez, MD is Professor and Associate Dean of Population Health and Health Equity in Medicine at UCSF and a general internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She is the founding Director of the UCSF Latinx Center of Excellence, a HRSA and UCSF funded initiative to increase academic diversity. Dr. Fernandez directs the Latinx and Immigrant Health Research Program at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations which generates actionable research to increase health equity and reduce health disparities in at-risk populations in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and nationally. Dr. Fernandez' research expertise includes language and literacy barriers in health care, health care equity in chronic disease, and racism in medicine. Most recently, her NIH funded research has focused on improving diabetes care among immigrant populations. Dr. Fernandez has served on the National Academy of Science Roundtable on Health Literacy since 2014. Dr. Fernandez is on the Board of Governors and Chair of the Science Oversight Committee at the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Center. Since 2020, she serves on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Paula Braveman, MD, MPH, and Alicia Fernandez, MD

Presented by the Investigator Skills Development Unit (ISDU) of the UCSF Research Coordinating Center to Reduce Disparities in Multiple Chronic Diseases (RCC-RD-MCD) (MPIs: E. Charlebois, PhD, S. Gansky, DrPH, K. Rhoads, MD, MPH)

Co-Sponsored by CAPS Town Hall and the CAPS Implementation Science and Health Systems (IS/HS) Core

ISDU Director: Mandana Khalili, MD, MAS, Professor of Medicine, UCSF, Chief of Clinical Hepatology, San Francisco General Hospital

ISDU Co-Director: Edwin Charlebois, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Division of Prevention Science, UCSF

Session Moderator: Stuart Gansky, DrPH, Professor and Lee Hysan Chair of Oral Epidemiology, Associate Dean for Research, UCSF