Social Determinants of Health are conditions where people are born, work, live, and play. SDOH drive a significant portion of Public Health issues. Kaiser Permanente is a leading healthcare organization that is laser-focused on this space. Kaiser Permanente invests $3 billion annually to improve conditions for health in the communities it serves and is shifting how it views health to include social factors like safe housing, economic wellbeing and racial justice.
Dr. Anand Shah (VP, Social Health) explains the impact and importance of viewing patients in a holistic format to understand their complete ecosystems and provide care and services in a way that respects and supports their social circumstances, while continuing to invest in their communities. Through its Thriving Communities social impact investment fund, Kaiser Permanente has invested $400 Million to create and preserve affordable housing in low-income and communities of color.
Some additional areas where the health care system is focused are environmental stewardship, increased access to healthcare through safety net partnerships and its own system, safe and successful schools, advancing policies that improve conditions for health in our nation’s largest cities, and social health
A laser-focused approach to moving from a state of enablement to empowerment is created by building a solid infrastructure, expanding partnerships, and taking a human-centered approach to designing solutions. Dr. Anand Shah and Kaiser Permanente's core strategy is to make a social impact on its 12.6 million health plan members and the many millions more who live in its communities that is sustainable and scalable.
About Dr. Anand Shah
Anand Shah, MD, MS is the Vice President of Social Health at Kaiser Permanente. He is responsible for developing and implementing Kaiser Permanente’s national social health strategy. Anand was most recently the Chief Product and Clinical Officer at Pieces Technologies, a company that utilizes clinical AI to provide integrated monitoring, prediction, and organizational learning services and software for hospitals, health systems and community-based organizations. There, he was responsible for clinical, data science, product, and technology teams, and he helped develop a new platform to connect health systems and community organizations together to address social determinants of health.
About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research.
Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward.