RISE Association partners with Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School senior fellow to identify the drivers of successful social determinants of health programs.

The RISE Association, in partnership with Alexandra Schweitzer, senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, is conducting a benchmarking survey in the field of social determinants of health.

The goal of the survey is to provide insight into the drivers of success of these initiatives to help practitioners develop more effective programs that address the conditions in the places that people live, learn, work, and play that affect health risks and outcomes. These health-related behaviors, socioeconomic factors, and environmental factors are the primary drivers of a person’s health.

The survey focuses on how health plans and community-based organizations define success for these programs and measure their outcomes and impact. The survey results will be unveiled at RISE’s National Summit on Social Determinants of Health in Nashville, Tenn. on March 15-17th.

Schweitzer said she is excited to collaborate with the RISE Association on this project to shine a light on successful partnerships between health plans or ACOs and social service organizations. “This work will provide an opportunity for people who are breaking new ground in social determinants of health to share their great work and lessons learned,” she said.

Marina Adamsky, executive director of production for RISE, said that survey data will be especially valuable for conference attendees. “This survey is in line with the goals of our conference to provide attendees with tactical, actionable, and scalable solutions to address issues in social determinants of health,” she said.

Health care organizations that have launched programs that address the social determinants of health are encouraged to participate in the survey. The survey may be accessed at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ProgramSurvey_SDOH.

The National Summit on Social Determinants of Health will take place March 15-17 at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tenn. For more information about the conference, please visit www.rise-sdoh.com/.

About Alexandra Schweitzer
Alexandra Schweitzer is a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. She is an expert at leading complex new ventures and transformation initiatives from strategy through successful execution. Her health care sector experience spans payers, providers, state government, and specialized analytics and managed care organizations. Schweitzer has built and led value-based integrated systems of care, including tools to address social determinants of health, in innovative health plans and provider-payer organizations, including a fully-integrated dual eligible Special Needs Plan, two Medicaid ACOs, and Iora Health, a national primary care organization known for its relationship-driven, technology-enabled care model. Schweitzer has a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University.  A lifelong learner, she has completed an executive MBA at Columbia University and other post-graduate programs. Her research project as a senior fellow is entitled, Addressing Social Determinants of Health: Why Some Initiatives Thrive and Others Don’t.

About Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School
The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School is an incubator of ideas which inform policy-based options and solutions. Through its many programs and affiliated faculty, the Center studies regulation; it examines energy policies; it considers how best to protect the environment; it thinks about the role of public and private sector collaboration in education; it ponders the future of finance; it considers the future of the international trading system; it strives to develop paradigms through which sustainability can be an important idea in every part of economic discourse; it promotes corporate social responsibility at a time when business organizations are increasingly under challenge; and it focuses on markets as central institutions in our society—institutions that cannot stand completely alone without strong public policies that undergird their function.

Editor's note: RISE’s National Summit on Social Determinants of Health has been postponed until June 28-30, 2020 at the same location.