Incorporating social determinants of health into comprehensive medication management: Insights from the field

Social determinants of health affect all aspects of health, including a patient's ability to access and appropriately use medications. Objective To understand the experience of pharmacists incorporating social determinants of health into their comprehensive medication management visits. Methods Two pharmacists practicing comprehensive medication management in an outpatient behavioral health clinic received regular coaching for 10 months from a social determinants of health consultant on incorporating social determinants of health into their visits. At the end of the project, an interview was conducted with both participating pharmacists to learn about their experience. All coaching calls and the interview were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed qualitatively. Results Fifteen codes emerged to describe the pharmacists' experience incorporating social determinants of health into their visits. The codes were categorized using the steps of the Pharmacists' Patient Care Process. Additionally, there was a category of codes describing larger system issues that posed a barrier to addressing social determinants of health, as well as a category of lessons that pharmacists learned through the process of incorporating social determinants of health into their visits. Conclusion Given the prevalence of social determinants of health and the dramatic effect they have on a patient's health and wellbeing, more work needs to be done to determine how health care teams can incorporate and address social determinants of health into their visits. This work provides an important first step to understanding how incorporating social determinants of health fit into the practice of comprehensive medication management.