Denisse M. Huerta

The Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) is a flagship education, training, and development program of the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) focused on increasing the number and diversity of researchers in aging. Authors sought to assess the program's contributions to geriatric and gerontology education by examining the scientific productivity of 294 RCMAR scientists who received pilot funding from the program during the last complete grant cycle, 2018 to 2023.

Across the 18 funded sites, the scientists obtained 53 NIH grants and 29 NIA-specific grants. They published 281 manuscripts, of which 141 were noted as direct outcomes of the pilot funding and support received through the program.

Findings: The findings indicated that the RCMAR program in its last cycle succeeded in promoting education and scientific career development of researchers from diverse backgrounds and researchers focused on health disparities to conduct transdisciplinary social and behavioral aging research.
 

​Summary: Health centers (HCs) play a crucial and integral role in addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) among vulnerable and underserved populations, yet data on SDOH assessment and subsequent actions is limited. Authors conducted a systematic review to understand the existing evidence of integration of SDOH into HC primary-care practices. 

Findings: Database searches yielded 3,516 studies, of which 41 articles met the inclusion criteria. A majority of studies showed that HCs primarily captured patient-level rather than community-level SDOH data. Studies also showed that HCs utilized SDOH in electronic health records but capabilities varied widely. A few studies indicated that HCs measured health-related outcomes of integrating SDOH data. The review highlighted that many knowledge gaps exist in the collection, use, and assessment of impact of these data on outcomes, and future research is needed to address this knowledge gap.
 

Read the Publication:

• Journal Article: A Systematic Literature Review of Health Center Efforts to Address Social Determinants of Health