An Unconditional Cash Transfer Program for Low-Income New Yorkers Affected by COVID-19.

Early in the pandemic, New York City's public hospital system partnered with multiple philanthropic foundations to offer an unconditional cash transfer program for low-income New Yorkers affected by COVID-19. The $1000 cash transfers were designed to help people meet their most immediate health and social needs and were incorporated into healthcare delivery and contact tracing workflows as a response to the public health emergency. To better understand program recipients' experiences, researchers conducted 150 telephone surveys with randomly sampled cash transfer recipients and 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with purposefully sampled survey participants. Survey participants were predominantly Latinx (87%) and women (65%). The most common reported uses of the $1000 were food and rent. Most participants (79%) reported that without the $1000 cash transfer they would have had difficulty paying for basic expenses or making ends meet, with specific positive effects reported related to food, housing, and ability to work. The majority of survey participants reported that receiving the cash assistance somewhat or greatly improved their physical health (83%) and mental health (89%). Qualitative interview results generally supported the survey findings.

Quantifying Health Systems' Investment In Social Determinants Of Health, By Sector, 2017-19.

The past decade has seen a growing recognition of the importance of social determinants of health for health outcomes. However, the degree to which US health systems are directly investing in community programs to address social determinants of health as opposed to screening and referral is uncertain. We searched for all public announcements of new programs involving direct financial investments in social determinants of health by US health systems from January 1, 2017, to November 30, 2019. We identified seventy-eight unique programs involving fifty-seven health systems that collectively included 917 hospitals. The programs involved at least $2.5 billion of health system funds, of which $1.6 billion in fifty-two programs was specifically committed to housing-focused interventions. Additional focus areas were employment (twenty-eight programs, $1.1 billion), education (fourteen programs, $476.4 million), food security (twenty-five programs, $294.2 million), social and community context (thirteen programs, $253.1 million), and transportation (six programs, $32 million). Health systems are making sizable investments in social determinants of health.