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PURPOSE Integrating social care into clinical care requires substantial resources. Use of existing data through a geographic information system (GIS) has the potential to support efficient and effective integration of social care into clinical settings. We conducted a scoping literature review characterizing its use in primary care settings to identify and address social risk factors. METHODS In December 2018, we searched 2 databases and extracted structured data for eligible articles that (1) described the use of GIS in clinical settings to identify and/or intervene on social risks, (2) were published between December 2013 and December 2018, and (3) were based in the United States. Additional studies were identified by examining references. RESULTS Of the 5,574 articles included for review, 18 met study eligibility criteria: 14 (78%) were descriptive studies, 3 (17%) tested an intervention, and 1 (6%) was a theoretical report. All studies used GIS to identify social risks (increase awareness); 3 studies (17%) described interventions to address social risks, primarily by identifying relevant community resources and aligning clinical services to patients' needs. CONCLUSIONS Most studies describe associations between GIS and population health outcomes; however, there is a paucity of literature regarding GIS use to identify and address social risk factors in clinical settings. GIS technology may assist health systems seeking to address population health outcomes through alignment and advocacy; its current application in clinical care delivery is infrequent and largely limited to referring patients to local community resources. Key words: geographic information systems; geospatial data; geography, medical; social determinants of health; social risk factors; disparities; needs assessment; health information technology; population health; vulnerable populations https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.2932, INTRODUCTION There is increasing recognition of potential roles that health care delivery systems can play to identify and address social determinants of health--the social, economic, and environmental factors that influences [...]

Interest and incentives are increasing around strategies whereby the health care sector can better identify and address patients' social and economic needs in the context of primary care delivery. This interest is likely to accelerate during the economic recession following the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet effective and sustainable strategies for integrating social care practices (eg, patient-facing social risk screening and activities to address identified needs) have not been clearly established. Lessons learned from more than 2 decades of research on behavioral health integration could be applied to efforts to integrate social care into primary care. In this article, we synthesize learnings from primary care and behavioral health care integration, and translate them into organizing principles with the goal of advancing social care integration practices to improve the health of both patients and communities. Key words: behavioral health integration; social care integration; social and economic needs; social determinants of health; social context; health services; population health; vulnerable populations, INTRODUCTION Growing recognition that patients' social and economic needs influence health outcomes has led to new health care sector initiatives to identify and address those needs in the context of [...]

Will the rise of patient navigators help avert health disparities?, Author(s): Shraddha Chakradhar [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Nature Medicine's associate news editor in Boston, USA In 2003, Beverly Moy was going through her day as an oncologist at Boston's Massachusetts [...]

This article discusses and evaluates the social aspects of group alcoholism therapy. Topics include social support, family intervention, and relapse prevention.

A framework for the analysis of illness narratives is presented, along with a discussion of methodological issues. Topics include the rise of chronic illness and the crisis of bio-medical narratives, form and content in chronic illness narratives, and three narrative forms: contingent, moral and core narratives.

Two measures of social stratification in the UK, the Registrar-General's Social Class schema and the Cambridge Scale, are compared in relation to inequalities in health and mortality. Topics include the conceptualization and measurement of social stratification and the correlations among stratification, lifestyle and disease.

AIDS represents research challenges for anthropology as well as for biomedicine. In many ways the dilemmas of anthropologists appear to be of lesser magnitude than those confronting biomedical researchers charged with the responsibility for treating patients and searching for cures and vaccines. Yet anthropological research is both politically sensitive and policy-relevant. Ethical practice in anthropology is linked to questions of methodology and theory which this article explores based on the author's leadership of CONNAISSIDA, a collaborative action-research team studying the medical anthropology of AIDS in Zaire from 1985 to 1990. The need for a broad approach to social research in support of AIDS prevention is argued.

This paper explores the social and cultural context of remission from alcohol problems in an urban American Indian community. Using the discourse of interviews conducted with 48 self-defined problem drinkers, 13 of whom had abstained from alcohol for at least a year prior to the interview, it explores the ways in which alcohol problems have been understood and dealt with by these Indian men and women. Drawing on the ethnographic literature on AA and culturally specific healing practices, the analysis centers on how new understandings of the self are articulated in sobriety and the ways in which this discourse draws on the themes of cultural restoration that are widely articulated in Indian communities. The paper closes with a consideration of how this inquiry with a community sample forces us to broaden models of self transformation that are derived from work in more circumscribed institutional contexts and, in turn, how the testimony of these men and women forces us to take quite seriously the idea that cultural restoration can be crucially involved as Indian people and communities grapple with problems with alcohol. Keywords: American Indians; Alcohol; Remission; Self; And Cultural identity

In this article, the author addresses issues of managed care and ethics and how they relate to counseling. Specifically, a recent article published in The Counseling Psychologist (C. C. Cooper & M. C. Gottlieb, 2000) is reviewed. Implications for counselors and counselor educators are then explored.