The ' what' and ' how' of screening for social needs in healthcare settings: a scoping review

Emma L Karran; Aidan G Cashin; Trevor Barker; Mark A Boyd; Alessandro Chiarotto; Omar Dewidar; Jennifer Petkovic; Saurab Sharma; Peter Tugwell; G Lorimer Moseley; Identifying Social Factors that Stratify Health Opportunities and Outcomes (ISSHOOs) Collaborative Core Research Group

doi:10.7717/peerj.15263

The ' what' and ' how' of screening for social needs in healthcare settings: a scoping review

PeerJ. 2023 Apr 21:11:e15263. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15263. eCollection 2023.

Affiliations

¹ IIMPACT in Health, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
² Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
³ School of Health and Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁴ Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
⁵ Northern Adelaide Local Health Network, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
⁶ Department of General Practice, Erasmus University/Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
⁷ Bruyere Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.
⁸ Department of Medicine and School of Epidemiology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.

Abstract

Background: Adverse social determinants of health give rise to individual-level social needs that have the potential to negatively impact health. Screening patients to identify unmet social needs is becoming more widespread. A review of the content of currently available screening tools is warranted. The aim of this scoping review was to determine what social needs categories are included in published Social Needs Screening Tools that have been developed for use in primary care settings, and how these social needs are screened.

Methods: We pre-registered the study on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/dqan2/). We searched MEDLINE and Embase from 01/01/2010 to 3/05/2022 to identify eligible studies reporting tools designed for use in primary healthcare settings. Two reviewers independently screened studies, a single reviewer extracted data. We summarised the characteristics of included studies descriptively and calculated the number of studies that collected data relevant to specific social needs categories. We identified sub-categories to classify the types of questions relevant to each of the main categories.

Results: We identified 420 unique citations, and 27 were included. Nine additional studies were retrieved by searching for tools that were used or referred to in excluded studies. Questions relating to food insecurity and the physical environment in which a person lives were the most frequently included items (92-94% of tools), followed by questions relating to economic stability and aspects of social and community context (81%). Seventy-five percent of the screening tools included items that evaluated five or more social needs categories (mean 6.5; standard deviation 1.75). One study reported that the tool had been 'validated'; 16 reported 'partial' validation; 12 reported that the tool was 'not validated' and seven studies did not report validation processes or outcomes.

Keywords: Primary care; Public health; Scoping review; Screening tools; Social determinants of health; Social needs.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Delivery of Health Care*
Health Facilities*
Humans

Grants and funding

Emma L. Karran, Trevor Barker and G. Lorimer Moseley are supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Leadership Investigator Grant to G. Lorimer Moseley (NHMRC ID 1178444). Aidan G. Cashin is supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Emerging Leadership Investigator Grant (NHMRC ID 2010088). Saurab Sharma is supported by John J. Bonica Fellowship from the International Association for the Study of Pain. Peter Tugwell is funded by Canada Research Chair Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.