Pediatric Social Risk Screening: Leveraging Research to Ensure Equity

Is current social risk screening in pediatric patients effective? I'm Ellen Francisco at Cincinnati Children's, and here's another article you should know about from App's as Articles of Interest. In this article from March of 2022, the authors review current social risk screening in pediatric patients. Social risk screening means screening pediatric patients for risk factors for things like food and housing insecurity, financial strain, and unsafe environments. Often, this is done by asking parents face to face or using other devices like tablets. The authors discussed that the current screening protocols may not be effective and may actually lead to more inequities. First, there's low concordance between the screening results showing who might need resources and who is actually asking for more resources. Second, families may feel uncomfortable with the screening and may think there might be downstream repercussions based on their answers. And third, there may be racial biases in the screening practices. For example, non-white patients may be asked these questions more often. And these issues may lead to a mismatch between the opportunity for resource engagement and the actual resource engagement. So the authors have five suggestions for future work. One, use community needs assessments and other population level data to identify the community needs. Two, use community partnerships to ensure that the community needs are addressed. Three, conduct studies to determine if just offering resources universally is more effective than screening. Four, provide tiered levels of support, and five, get patient and family feedback and incorporate it. What do you think about social screening? Let us know and look out for more articles you should know about.