Up-leveling UX and Equity in Spine Surgery
Role
Project Lead and Lead Researcher
Challenge Statement
How might we design a toolkit that improves patients' perceived care by surgeons, optimizes the risk/benefit ratio of spine surgery, and improves equity in health outcomes, that can be easily implemented by different clinics around the US?
Approach
Pioneered an approach to understanding the impact of social determinants of health and social risk factors in aggregate to provide an accurate picture of the impact of these factors on the development of conditions leading to spine surgery and the outcomes from spine surgery
Brought together a cross-functional team of experts in neurosurgery, nursing, statistics, and healthcare administration to develop a social needs screening toolkit, for use by surgery clinics
Created an approach to implementing social needs screening in pre-surgery workflows
Pilot tested toolkit in 2 surgery clinics throughout health system to assess implementation fidelity and feasibility
Refined implementation protocol and evaluated intervention effectiveness in 4 additional clinics
Impact
The final toolkit offers flexile implementation protocols, allowing for widespread use across surgery clinics in US.
Publication: Social Determinants of Health: If You Aren't Measuring Them, You Aren't Seeing the Big Picture
Publication: Quantifying the collective influence of social determinants of health using conditional and cluster modeling
Publication: Association of Burden and Prevalence of Arthritis With Disparities in Social Risk Factors, Findings From 17 US States