Using Adult Learning Characteristics and the Humanities to Teach Undergraduate Healthcare Students about Social Determinants of Health: Data and Lessons Learned from Photography Essays

Abstract

Social determinants of health (SDOH) refer to the factors that influence one\u27s quality of life and various health outcomes like morbidity, mortality, life expectancy, healthcare expenditures, and much more (Artiga & Hinton, 2018). These factors may also be viewed as predictors of various health outcomes and include factors like access to healthcare, education, socio-economic status, and physical conditions such as living environments (Baverstock et al., 2018). Healthcare leaders are recognizing the growing significance of SDOH impact on health and health equity. Educators in medicine are using classroom space to teach about SDOH and their effect (Doobay-Persaud et al., 2019; Klein et al., 2011; Martinez et al., 2015; Sharma et al., 2018; Witten & Maskarinec, 2015); however, not much is seen in the literature for allied healthcare professionals (Brown et al., 2021). Authors employed several lenses to teach SDOH to allied healthcare professionals who are also students in an online Bachelor of Science Healthcare Studies program at a large academic medical center in the southeastern United States: (1) characteristics of adult learning, (2) aspects of a transparency framework, and (3) fundamentals of the humanities.https://medica-musc.researchcommons.org/posters/1021/thumbnail.jp