In May, Cynthia Herrick, MD, FACP and collaborators had their study titled, “Associations among social needs, health and healthcare utilization, and desire for navigation services among US Medicaid beneficiaries with type 2 diabetes,” published in “Health and Social Care in the Community.”
The study’s intent was to better understand the social needs of Medicaid beneficiaries with type 2 diabetes, including how those social needs intertwine with key health indicators. Their hypothesis was “that among individuals with type 2 diabetes, those with a greater number of social needs would report more health-related problems and be more interested in receiving social needs navigation services.”
A cross-sectional survey was conducted, reporting that 85% of participants had at least one social need. Along with further results that supported their concept, that “having more social needs was associated with greater perceived stress, diabetes distress, problems with sleep and executive and cognitive functioning, less frequent diabetes self-care activities, more days of poor mental health and activity limitations, worse self-reported health and more hospitalizations.”
Dr. Herrick and colleagues also found that “social needs were not associated with days of poor physical health, BMI, self-reported A1C or smoking status,” but that they were associated with “a wide range of indicators of poor health and well-being.”