• Rachel Gold, Erika Cottrell, Arwen Bunce, Mary Middendorf, Celine Hollombe, Stuart Cowburn, Peter Mahr, and Gerardo Melgar.
• From the Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Portland, OR (RG, AB, CH); OCHIN, Inc., Portland (RG, EC, MM, SC); the Multnomah County Health Department, Portland (PM); and the Cowlitz Family Health Center, Longview, WA (GM). rachel.gold@kpchr.org.
• J Am Board Fam Med. 2017 Jul 1; 30 (4): 428447428-447.

Background"Social determinants of heath" (SDHs) are nonclinical factors that profoundly affect health. Helping community health centers (CHCs) document patients' SDH data in electronic health records (EHRs) could yield substantial health benefits, but little has been reported about CHCs' development of EHR-based tools for SDH data collection and presentation.MethodsWe worked with 27 diverse CHC stakeholders to develop strategies for optimizing SDH data collection and presentation in their EHR, and approaches for integrating SDH data collection and the use of those data (eg, through referrals to community resources) into CHC workflows.ResultsWe iteratively developed a set of EHR-based SDH data collection, summary, and referral tools for CHCs. We describe considerations that arose while developing the tools and present some preliminary lessons learned.ConclusionStandardizing SDH data collection and presentation in EHRs could lead to improved patient and population health outcomes in CHCs and other care settings. We know of no previous reports of processes used to develop similar tools. This article provides an example of 1 such process. Lessons from our process may be useful to health care organizations interested in using EHRs to collect and act on SDH data. Research is needed to empirically test the generalizability of these lessons.© Copyright 2017 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

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