743 - How Commonly Are Children’s Hospitals Partnering with Community-Based and Other External Organizations to Address Social Determinants of Health?

Based on strong associations between social risks such as food security and housing stability and child health outcomes, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association endorse screening for patient social risks in clinical settings. After identifying social risks, some hospitals partner with community-based organizations (CBOs) to address patient social needs. For example, hospitals may refer patients to CBOs upon discharge. However, little is known about how commonly these partnerships exist between CBOs and children’s hospitals.

Objective:

To examine how commonly children’s hospitals partner with CBOs and other external organizations to address patient social risks.

Design/Methods:

We analyzed hospitals responding to the 2021 AHA Annual Survey, which asks about which CBOs and other external organizations the hospital works with to “meet patient social needs.” Example organizations include food insecurity organizations, community non-profits, and faith-based organizations. We defined children’s hospitals as those endorsing primarily restricting admissions to children. To adjust for nonresponse, we performed a logistic regression to predict responding to the survey based on hospital characteristics. We then calculated the inverse of the likelihood of response, and weighted calculations using this value to extrapolate the sample to all acute care children’s hospitals in the US. We calculated the weighted percentage of hospitals answering each question and used Chi-squared tests to compare rates of outcomes based on hospital bed size, ownership, Medicaid status (being in the highest quartile of proportion of Medicaid patients served), teaching status, and region.

Results:

Of 94 children’s hospitals, 75-80 answered questions of interest (depending on the question). Frequency of partnering with CBOs/other external organizations risks varied depending on the type of organization. Children’s hospitals partnered with other government agencies the least (11.2%) and local food and transportation organizations the most (both 58.8%). There were few significant differences in rates of external partnerships by hospital characteristics (Table).

Conclusion(s):

This is the first study of which we are aware to assess rates of children’s hospitals’ partnerships with CBOs/external organizations. We found that while many children’s hospitals partner with organizations to address social risks, there is wide variation based on type of external organization. Future work should explore facilitators and barriers to partnerships between health systems and external organizations across different domains.