Giving Compass' Take:

• State and federal officials are curbing health costs by providing support in non-medical services such as transportation, housing, and food to address social determinants of health. 

• How will these programs sustain funding? Why do they see success over other types of targeted medical care? 

• Read about why innovation must be present in medical models that incorporate social determinants of health. 

As state and federal officials increasingly search for ways to curb rising health care costs, a decades-old idea is gaining traction: helping people with challenges that have nothing to do with medical care but everything to do with their health.

Insurers are taking steps as simple as paying for hot meal deliveries and outreach to homebound people and replacing air filters in homes with asthmatic children. More radical approaches include building affordable housing for people who don’t have a stable home of their own.

State and local experiments targeting factors like housing, transportation, food and other nonmedical services are flourishing as ways to improve people’s health while cutting costs.

But advocates and industry veterans say federal involvement could bolster those efforts. State leaders say the federal government also could increase flexibility in how Medicaid and Medicare dollars can be spent, as well as break down the divisions among housing, criminal justice, health care and other agencies that make addressing social problems challenging.

“So much can be accomplished leveraging successful public-private partnerships, but each side needs to do their part,” said Lucy Theilheimer, Meals on Wheels America’s chief strategy and impact officer.

“Together, by addressing social determinants of health on a national level, we can not only provide the best possible care for our most vulnerable Americans, but also avoid more costly health care usage in the future.”

Proponents point to projects across the country as proof that addressing these so-called “social determinants of health” will help curb spending.

Read the full article about saving health costs by Misty Williams at Roll Call