Author Archives: Amy Chepaitis and Amarilys Bernacet

About Amy Chepaitis and Amarilys Bernacet

Amy Chepaitis is a public health systems researcher at RTI. She has more than 20 years of diverse and complementary experience in health care management, policy, research, consulting, and technical assistance/capacity building. Her training and experience provides a unique perspective on and understanding of varied aspects of health and social care. Her research and evaluation projects have focused primarily on health care reform, community health care, and the integration of health, social and supportive care for the underserved. She is an organizational theorist and qualitative methodologist. Her current project roles, all for large-scale federal evaluations, include leading major tasks of an evaluation of state-level demonstrations for the dually eligible population, and co-leading three awardee teams for an evaluation of a nationwide initiative focusing on social determinants of health.

Downstream Efforts to Address Social Determinants in the CMS Financial Alignment Initiative

In our last blog post, we discussed the Biden Administration’s infrastructure package as an example of an upstream policy effort that could promote equity and help address disparities. However, as we pointed out in the first in this series of blogs, stakeholders who interact with community members are best suited to identify social risk factors… Read More »

Infrastructure investments, SDOH, and equity

The Biden Administration’s proposed infrastructure investments are an example of an upstream effort to address disparities related to social determinants of health (SDOH). As mentioned in our previous blog post, SDOH are the conditions or circumstances within which people live, and these differ based on the distribution of power, money, and resources. The systems and… Read More »

Social determinants of health: Language nuance matters

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines social determinants of health (SDOH) as the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the “conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age.” Currently, SDOH is a hot topic as stakeholders try new ways to improve individual and population health, achieve health equity, and reduce… Read More »