Applying Lessons From Behavioral Health Integration to Social Care Integration in Primary Care

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 [...]