PUBPOL 3650

Social Care Navigation to Advance Health Equity

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

Unmet health related social needs (HRSN) – such as unstable housing, food insecurity, and lack of reliable transportation – exacerbate poor health. Health care organizations are increasingly screening patients for unmet HRSNs and collaborating with local community-based organizations (CBOs) to address patient social needs to deliver whole-person care and advance health equity. Critical to the screen-and-refer process are trained community members – patient social care navigators – who contact patients who screen positive for one or more HRSN and connect patients to local CBOs to meet those needs. In this course, students will develop and practice in the classroom the skills that navigators in the field use to work collaboratively with patients, participating clinician practices, community health workers, and not-for-profit organizations to provide social care navigation to patients to improve health outcomes and health equity of Tompkins County residents.

Distribution Requirements (D-AG, SBA-AG), (D-HE, SBA-HE)

Exploratory Studies (CU-CEL)

Last 3 terms offered 2025SP, 2024SP

Learning Outcomes REF-FA25

• Define social determinants of health (SDOH) and demonstrate understanding of how they shape health outcomes.
• Analyze promising policies and practices nationally and locally to address health inequities by integrating clinical and social care (e.g. social needs screening and referral infrastructure, data interoperability systems, reimbursement for social care services through health insurance).
• Describe principles of trauma-informed and strengths-based approaches to care and actively put those principles into practice during role playing.
• Identify and propose solutions to barriers to care such as stigma, structural racism, access, lack of medical system integration, etc.
• Work collaboratively with an engaged course partner to support improvements in local social care navigation networks.

View Enrollment Information