Social Determinants of Health
Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) are nonmedical factors that shape health outcomes, often driving inequities and disparities.
With 80% of health influenced by life’s conditions—where we live, work, and grow—analyzing SDoH alongside healthcare claims data is essential for a complete picture.
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Unlocking Total Health: The 5 Categories of Social Determinants
of Health
Social and Community Context
Demographic, Culture
The strength of social networks, community ties, and civic engagement plays a critical role in shaping health behaviors, stress levels, and overall wellbeing. Understanding these dynamics helps uncover invisible drivers of health risk.
Economic Stability
Employment, Income Level
Financial health is foundational to physical health. Income level, job stability, and economic stress directly influence access to care, medication adherence, and lifestyle choices—key levers in managing population health.
Education Access & Quality
Education is one of the most predictive indicators of health outcomes. From early learning to health literacy, access to quality education shapes long-term health trajectories and influences how individuals engage with the healthcare system.
Healthcare Context
Health Behaviors, Health Status, Access to Care, Insurance Status, Mortality Rate
Access alone isn’t enough—quality, continuity, and cultural relevance in care matter. Measuring healthcare access in context reveals critical barriers and highlights opportunities to close gaps and improve outcomes.
Neighborhood & Physical Environment Factors
Housing, Transportation, Environment, Crime, Food Access
Where people live—down to the ZIP code—can be more predictive of health than genetics. Housing stability, transportation access, environmental exposures, and neighborhood safety all contribute to chronic disease risk and health equity.
Integrating Social Factors
into Health Insights
Springbuk leverages the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) dataset to determine risk tiers for employer location data within the United States. The CDC SVI data set was selected because of its robust risk segmentation and its geographic specificity—it goes down to the census tract level.
Other methodologies are at the state or county level, which are not as meaningful.The CDC Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) groups 16 U.S.census variables into four categories related to social vulnerability, including:
- Socioeconomic Status
- Household Characteristics
- Racial and Ethnic Minority Status
- Housing Type and Transportation
Springbuk’s Forward-thinking Approach
- Understand how social determinantinformation and factors affect overallhealthcare cost and utilization
- Understand associations between thedata and how this leads to inefficienciesin healthcare usage and higher costsas well as disease burden
- Identify and provide informed strategiesaround utilization and guidance of the healthcare plan
- Understand drivers of suboptimal plan utilizers
- Design benefit plans that meet theneeds of the whole population, not just segments
- Understand the impact of changesover time to utilization and overall cost
- Influence communication, mode of outreach, and address health literacy provided by key clinical partners andc are managers
- Ability to communicate with members in most effective ways to address language, education level, and health literacy, among other factors
- ⟩ Identify risk more accurately
- Understand risk of developing a disease associated with high healthcare costs
- Do you have higher utilization of disability or leave within certain locations, by job type or coverage type?
- What are common risk factors and conditions with members on disability?
- Has expansion of virtual care or telemedicine impacted efforts around mental health?
- Do members have access to the right care and technology to use new options for care?
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- How does access to childcare impact your population?
- How are your current strategies affecting various member segments and overall effectiveness?
Building a Path to Health Intelligence with Health Analytics
Achieving actionable Health Intelligence begins with a strong health analytics foundation. Springbuk's suite of analytics tools provides the comprehensive information and framework needed to identify trends and opportunities within your employee population.
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More than health benefits data, a world of insight at your finger tips.
Springbuk is the health data analytics solution that equips employers and benefits advisors with the deep, immediate insights they need to sharpen strategies, improve health, and contain costs.
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