Screening for adverse social determinants of health, or social risk factors, is becoming increasingly common in health care settings. This screening is supported by multiple professional societies, including the AAFP, AAP and ACP. There is growing evidence to support activities to identify and intervene on patient social risk factors, with the goal of improving patient health, wellness, and health equity. Researchers from UCSF SIREN will discuss 1) the acceptability of social risk screening from the perspective of patients and caregivers of pediatric patients, and 2) current screening activities at UCSF and ZSFG.

Emilia De Marchis, MD, MAS
Dr. Emilia De Marchis is a family physician and health services researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research is based out of the UCSF Social Intervention Research & Evaluation Network (SIREN), where she works to assess and improve how we screen for and address social risk factors within health care settings. Dr. De Marchis co-directs coursework through the UCSF Implementation Science Training program, Partnerships for Research in Implementation Science for Equity (PRISE) Center. She uses implementation science methods to focus on moving research on social risk screening, assistance and adjustment activities into real-world settings. Her clinical work is based out of the UCSF Family Medicine Center at Lakeshore. Through her research and clinical practice, she hopes to advance the health care system’s integration of patient social risk data to provide high quality, patient-centered preventative health care, to reduce health disparities. Dr. De Marchis received her MD from Stanford University, and her MAS in Clinical Research and Certificate in Implementation Science from UCSF.

Matt Pantell, MD
Dr. Matt Pantell is an Assistant Professor at UCSF, where his research is conducted with the UCSF Center for Health and Community, the UCSF Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network, and the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative. His research focuses on the utility of incorporating social information into clinical decision making, addressing social needs in clinical settings, data mining and the analysis of large datasets, and biological manifestations of the social determinants of health. Clinically, Dr. Pantell works as a pediatric hospitalist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital - Mission Bay and Washington Hospital in Fremont. He also works as a pediatric urgent care physician and runs the Tattoo Removal Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

Caroline Fichtenberg, PhD
Dr. Caroline Fichtenberg is the Managing Director of the Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network (SIREN) and Research Scientist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In these roles, she leads efforts to conduct, catalyze, and disseminate high quality research on health sector strategies to reduce health inequities by addressing social determinants of health. She brings to these positions more than a decade of experience working to improve health and economic outcomes for America’s most vulnerable families, including seven years working on national efforts in Washington, DC. While Director of Research at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), she led the development of a report that identified nine federal policy changes that could reduce child poverty by 60 percent. As Director of Epidemiology and Planning at the Baltimore City Health Department, she oversaw the city’s first analysis of neighborhood health inequities that uncovered a 20-year gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighborhoods of the city. Caroline also served as director of the Center for Public Health Policy at the American Public Health Association (APHA) and as Health Policy Advisor to Senator Harkin on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, where she promoted health in all policies approaches to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequities. She earned her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University, an M.S. degree in Biology from Yale University and an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.