According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cleveland has the highest poverty rate among large U.S. cities. With more than 114,000 people living in poverty in 2019, these individuals face daily challenges related to violence, lack of digital connections, housing, food, access to medical care and behavioral health providers, unemployment, and so much more.
All of these economic and social conditions that influence health outcomes are known as social determinants of health (SDoH), and their impact is often under-represented in traditional medical diagnoses.
WellLink Health Alliance is convening community partners with the support of Amazon Web Services’s (AWS) cloud computing technology to create the Social Determinants of Health Innovation Hub (SDoH Innovation Hub), to address SDoH and their root causes.
Using data from local and global sources, WellLink's SDoH Innovation Hub is first addressing the behavioral health precursors to gun violence. It will then find solutions in areas that include:
- Environmental Health
- Access to Healthcare
- Maternal and Infant Deaths
- Digital Connectivity
- Education and Workforce Development
- Entrepreneurship
- Urban Development
- Housing
- Transportation
SDoH-driven disparities are rooted structural racism and poverty, and WellLink Health Alliance is committed to finding solutions for these very complex social and economic issues. This requires accurate and insightful data. WellLink Health Alliance, along with local businesses, nonprofit organizations, government officials, community residents, and policymakers, are driving action informed by the data.
Social determinants of health (SDoH) are the factors that influence everyone in the places where they live, learn, work and play. They include things like access to healthy food, employment, transportation, education, green spaces, a safe and clean environment, and safe housing.
WellLink Health Alliance brings together hospitals and other partners to solve problems, serve the community, and positively impact medical, social and economic health. Community health as well as data collection and reporting are two areas of focus for our work, which is where the SDoH Innovation Hub is grounded.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s cloud computing business. Since 2006, AWS has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud computing offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and more. Millions of customers — including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies — trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. WellLink Health Alliance is building a platform on AWS that will enable the rapid analysis of heterogenous data from hundreds of local partner organizations using AWS’s compute, storage, machine learning, and other services to determine patterns and indicators that will better inform health action and policies. The platform will analyze data that AWS does not have access to or control.
The SDoH Innovation Hub is finding solutions for people experiencing violence, behavioral health issues, homelessness, food insecurity, lack of medical care, joblessness, lack of education or job training, inability to use the internet, and other SDoH-related disparities. Once the SDoH needs are clearly captured, the SDoH Innovation Hub data insights will formulate solutions — both short- and long-term.
WellLink Health Alliance is connecting with private, public, and governmental organizations to serve on the SDoH Innovation Hub Advisory Council and its work groups. These work groups are using data-driven insights to propose programmatic and policy-oriented solutions related to gun violence, behavioral health, homelessness, food insecurity, and other SDoH issues. The Advisory Council and the work groups are co-chaired by members of the community.
Addressing SDoH-driven disparities is complex. Solutions will require ideas, resources, and support from all levels of government — city, county, state, and federal — as well as private organizations. Furthermore, it will take time to eliminate these complex issues. No solution will immediately solve an issue and more than one solution will be required.
Structural racism leads to poverty; and this hurts everyone in Cleveland. No one lives independently of each other. When one person suffers from a disparity, the impacts ripple through the community. Because we are all connected, addressing these areas of need will benefit all residents of Cleveland.
