Tools for Putting Social Determinants of Health into Action

Looking at SDOH data can help practitioners better recognize the root causes that affect population health. Moving from data to action, however, can be challenging. The following CDC tools and resources can help practitioners take action to address SDOH:

• At-a-Glance: 10 Essential Public Health Services and How they Can Include Addressing Social Determinants of Health Inequities
  • This brief document is intended to help public health agencies embed SDOH efforts as part of their portfolio in protecting the health of communities that they serve.  This simple 2-column table helps illustrate the relationship between addressing SDOH inequities and the 10 essential public health services. Through broader awareness of how these 10 key public health practices can better incorporate consideration of SDOH, public health practitioners can transform and strengthen their capacity to advance health equity. This document includes links to relevant examples of SDOH resources and tools.
• Best Practices User Guide: Health Equity in Tobacco Prevention and Control
  • This user guide focuses on how comprehensive tobacco control programs can work to achieve health equity in tobacco prevention and control. It offers tobacco-control program staff and partners information on evidence-based strategies, real-world examples, and tobacco-control resources and tools to help achieve health equity when planning, implementing, and enforcing tobacco control policies.
• The online Community Approaches training course introduces the concept of health equity. The course has six lessons, each of which includes questions or activities that help learners test their knowledge and practice new skills. It includes a post-test to assess learners’ mastery of the material.
• Data Set Directory of Social Determinants of Health at the Local Level
  • The Data Set Directory contains an extensive list of data sets that include SDOH. The directory includes 12 domains of the social environment (e.g., economy, education, employment), a list of components within each domain (e.g., income, educational attainment, occupational safety), and data sources and variables (e.g., economic segregation, graduation rates, job quality) that can be used to measure the components. Included data sets mostly contain information for metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).
• Essentials for Childhood: Steps to Create Safe, Stable, Nurturing Relationships, and Environments
  • The Essentials for Childhood framework describes evidence-based strategies that communities can use to create environments that help children grow up to be healthy and productive.
• The Guide to Community Preventive Services
  • The Guide to Community Preventive Services (The Community Guide) is a collection of evidence-based findings of the Community Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force). The Task Force reviews intervention approaches across a wide range of public health topics, including health equity. Current Community Guide health equity reviews are focused on educational interventions to reduce health inequities among racial and ethnic minorities and low-income populations.
• Health Equity Resource Toolkit for State Practitioners Addressing Obesity Disparities
  • The Health Equity Resource toolkit helps state health departments and partners work with communities to reduce obesity in populations experiencing health disparities. It helps the user learn how changes in policy, health systems, and environment can reduce obesity disparities and achieve health equity. The toolkit’s six-step process shows how to plan, implement, and evaluate a program. It also describes the Social Ecological Model, a useful conceptual framework.
• A Practitioner’s Guide to Advancing Health Equity
  • The Practitioner’s Guide to Advancing Health Equity can help public health practitioners reduce disparities in chronic diseases. It provides a collection of health equity considerations for policy, systems, and environmental improvement strategies focused on tobacco-free living, healthy food and beverages, and active living.
• The Prevention Status Reports (PSRs)
  • The PSRs are a performance measurement system for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that highlightthe status of policies and practices designed to address important public health problems and concerns. They are:  Alcohol-Related Harms; Food Safety; Healthcare-Associated Infections; Heart Disease and Stroke; HIV; Motor Vehicle Injuries; Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity; Prescription Drug Overdose; Teen Pregnancy; and Tobacco Use.

    The PSRs examine the extent to which states are using evidence-based policies and practices, including social/structural determinants of health, to address our nation’s most pressing health concerns. A key benefit of the PSRs is that they take widely dispersed—and often hard-to-understand—information about state policies and practices and organize it into a simple, easy-to-use format. The PSRs can be used to assess a state’s status and identify areas for improvement.

• Promoting Health Equity: A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health
  • The Promoting Health Equity workbook provides tools to develop, implement, and evaluate interventions that target SDOH.
• Public Health Reports: Applying Social Determinants of Health to Public Health Practice
  • This special issue of Public Health Reports  illustrates how public health professionals can address SDOH through activities that promote health equity among populations disproportionately affected by infectious and chronic diseases.
• Public Health Reports: Data Systems and Social Determinants of Health
  • This special issue of Public Health Reports  focuses on how data can increase our understanding of SDOH. These articles describe ways to link national- and state-level surveillance data with data on labor, housing, and policy. Also, experts share their views on gender equity as a social determinant, use of public health law research to address SDOH, and psychosocial factors affecting health.
• Public Health Reports: Social Determinants of Health (focus on HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STIs, and TB)
  • This special issue of Public Health Reports  applies a SDOH framework to the interrelated epidemics of HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis in the United States and globally.
• Safety and Health in Manufactured Structures
  • This report identifies and summarizes safety and health issues in a range of manufactured structures that include manufactured homes, travel trailers, camping trailers, and park trailers. It is a comprehensive resource to inform discussions and future decisions regarding the design, construction, and maintenance of manufactured structures in the United States.
• School Health Guidelines to Promote Healthy Eating and Physical Activity
  • The School Health Guidelines provide a foundation for developing, implementing, and evaluating school-based healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices. Each of the nine guidelines is accompanied by a set of strategies developed to help schools reach their goals.
• The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Healthy Homes
  • This Call to Action  describes how people can protect themselves from disease, disability, and injury that may result from health hazards in their homes. Included are practical steps toward a society-wide, comprehensive, and coordinated approach that can create safe, healthy, affordable, and accessible homes for everyone.
• Technical Packages for Violence Prevention
  • These technical packages help states and communities take advantage of the best available evidence to prevent violence. Approaches require multi-level, multi-sector engagement to prevent violence. Each package is intended as a resource to guide and inform prevention decision-making in communities and states. The strategies and approaches in the technical package represent different levels of the social ecology with efforts intended to impact individual behaviors as well as the relationship, family, school, community, and societal factors that influence risk and protective factors for violence. Infographics for the violence technical packages provide a visual representation of what is in the technical packages.
• Using Health Data to Highlight Milestones: A Cookbook for Non‐profit Program Managers
  • The Cookbook for Non-profit Program Managers introduces program managers and grant writers to data sources on housing-related health conditions of lead poisoning, asthma, and unintentional home injuries and provides guidance on how to use these data to highlight milestones and successes.

For questions or additional information, email healthpolicynews@cdc.gov.

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