Evaluating Social Determinants of Health in Clinical Communications Data

Social determinants of health (SDOH) contribute to a patient's overall health and well-being. With the shift towards telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic, use of secure messaging is becoming more prevalent and may be a valuable source of SDOH information. In this work, we studied presence of SDOH "chatter" in clinical communications data from a direct primary care practice, using a keyword-based script to automatically detect specific SDOH topics, including stress, depression, and tobacco use.