The Centene Center for Health Transformation to Highlight Unmet Social Needs Research Findings at the 41st Annual Society of Behavioral Medicine Conference
Amy McQueen, PhD, a faculty researcher at the Centene Center for Health Transformation, has been selected to share her findings during a Paper Session at the Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions of the Society of Behavioral Medicine conference being held April 1 through 4 in San Francisco, CA. Her abstract “Examining associations between unmet social needs and health among Medicaid beneficiaries” highlights findings that link unmet social needs and health.
“I am excited by this opportunity to share our team’s findings and present at the Society of Behavioral Medicine conference,” said Dr. McQueen. “This type of behavioral research has the ability to impact the way we look at delivering care and promoting health behavior change in low-income populations.”
This research set out to examine how health-related outcomes in a sample of adult Medicaid beneficiaries is impacted by a set of social needs. Most research to date has examined associations between a single social need (e.g., food insecurity) and a few health-related outcomes in a specific population subgroup. By extending this work to include more than one social need and by increasing the sample to include a large population of Medicaid beneficiaries across the state of Louisiana, Dr. McQueen and her team will be able to further examine the differences by type and cluster of social needs and for a variety of different chronic conditions and combinations. This approach supports efforts to integrate systematic screening and interventions to address unmet needs into healthcare systems to improve health outcomes.
Dr. McQueen’s research is focused on understanding how cognitive, psychosocial, and environmental determinants influence health behaviors and testing behavioral interventions to improve health. Her interest in individuals’ biases and defenses that impede their engagement in health behaviors has been instrumental in the development and success of many of the Centene Center’s research initiatives including Coaching Terms Study, Usability Testing of a Goal-Setting Platform, and Life Values Assessment.
About The Centene Center for Health Transformation The Centene Center for Health Transformation™ is a community-corporate-academic-healthcare partnership that advances life-centric health research to improve lives so that communities can thrive. For more information regarding the Centene Center for Health Transformation, visit https://www.centenecenter.wustl.edu