The role of academic health centers in addressing social responsibility

Abstract

Despite the many successes achieved by academic health centers and the significant attention paid to the importance of the impact of social determinants on health, a broader movement of the academic health center community to share best practices and standardize these efforts across institutions and communities has not taken hold. The “guild mentality” of the health professions, the existing university/academic health center structure, regulation and accreditation, and misaligned incentives in the health care system all inhibit the development of this movement. In this article, we propose a new model for how the academic health center community might better address the social determinants of health.