Advertise on podcast: The SIREN Podcast

On June 8th SIREN and Camden Coalition co-hosted a webinar about the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Accountable Health Communities Model Final Evaluation Report (published February 2026). The event included a brief report overview and a moderated discussion with AHC implementation site leaders from Colorado, New Jersey, and Oklahoma exploring their experiences with model implementation, impacts, and sustainability.

On February 12, 2026 SIREN co-directors Danielle Hessler Jones and Laura Gottlieb and Alameda Health System Medical Director of Patient Quality, Andy Quiñones-Rivera, had a conversation about assessing patients’ experiences of healthcare-based social care. Here’s the scoop: Recent state and national efforts to incentivize social care have introduced measures focused on the quantity of social risk screening or referrals. These measures fail to simultaneously assess the quality of those services, including the patient experience of having healthcare teams ask about or intervene to address social conditions. The result has been an emerging national concern that rather than leading to care improvements, healthcare-based social care activities might instead be implemented in ways that cause harm to patients, e.g., by triggering stressful reactions, stigmatizing patients, not leading to meaningful service referrals, or otherwise undermining patients’ relationships with healthcare providers. In this conversation, panelists described their recent work developing and validating the new Patient Experience of Social Care Measure, which can serve to counter-balance the current quantity-focused assessments.  Access the measure here: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/tools-resources/resources/patient-experience-social-care-measure

In November 2024, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) released the third evaluation report of the Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Model, in which Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries in 28 communities were screened for social risks and offered navigation to help resolve identified risks. The 177-page report is chock full of interesting findings. On May 8th Dawn Alley, former director of the AHC Model at CMMI and Head of Scale at IMPaCT Care and SIREN Co-Directors Caroline Fichtenberg and Danielle Hessler-Jones unpacked the report’s findings.

The closing plenary discussion at the SIREN 2025 National Research Meeting: Advancing the science of social care, occurred on February 4, 2025 and featured a conversation with health and social care leaders Damon Francis, Monica Soni, Palav Babaria, and Sanjay Basu. Speakers explored multiple social care initiatives being taken to scale and offered their insights about how to navigate this work within a rapidly changing federal policy landscape. Content from the 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting can be viewed here: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting This podcast was made possible through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.

This plenary session held on February 3, 2025 at the SIREN 2025 National Research Meeting: Advancing the science of social care featured a discussion between moderator Anand Shah, Vice President of Social Health at Kaiser Permanente, and panelists Stuart Butler, Scholar in Residence of Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, and Len Nichols, professor emeritus of Health Policy at George Mason University. (Note: Dr Nichols joined virtually.) The panel explored the rapidly shifting sands of social care policy under the new administration. Panelists shared lessons from other periods in the country’s past and offered suggestions for adapting to new practical realities while staying committed to values that underpin social care. Content from the 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting can be viewed here: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting This podcast was made possible through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.

The opening plenary session on February 3, 2025 at the SIREN 2025 National Research Meeting: Advancing the science of social care, featured keynote speaker Lauren Taylor, an assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she is jointly appointed in the Division of Healthcare Delivery Science and the Division of Medical Ethics. In her talk, “Whose job is it, anyway? Exploring the ethics of health care's involvement in social care,” Dr. Taylor dove into the question of whether it is the responsibility of the health care sector to provide social care. She brought insights from ethics, political philosophy, and management science to help the audience make decisions that simultaneously reflect the needs of both current and future sociopolitical conditions. Content from the 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting can be viewed here: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting This podcast was made possible through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.

Medicaid community reinvestment requirements enable states to require or incentivize state contractors to reinvest in the communities they serve. State laws, waivers, and contracts that include community reinvestment provisions have specified reinvestments (using percentage of profits and/or performance measures) in community initiatives that align with the state’s key priorities, e.g., improving healthy food access. On January 14, 2025, the UCSF Social Interventions Research & Evaluation Network (SIREN) and the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School hosted a webinar to learn more about these innovative approaches and planned evaluations from state Medicaid leaders and other population health research experts. The target audience for this webinar includes health care providers, social care providers, health policy practitioners, policymakers, and researchers.

SIREN was excited to partner with Futures Without Violence on a two-part webinar series this season. In the second event held on December 5, 2024, speakers shared their lessons learned about sustainable and equitable approaches to documentation/coding and intervention, which are relevant not only to intimate partner violence but also to other social drivers of health.  This webinar is made possible with support from Blue Shield of California Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.

SIREN partnered with Futures Without Violence on a two-part webinar series this season. On November 5th, 2024 speakers discussed evidence-based and healing-centered approaches for responding to intimate partner violence and share strategies shown to enable and sustain meaningful partnerships with community-based programs. This webinar was made possible through support from the Blue Shield of California Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.

Evidence is mounting about the impacts of interventions such as medically tailored meals and produce prescriptions on diet-related health conditions, fueling interest in these interventions among healthcare organizations and payers. On June 5th at 9am PT/12pm ET we heard experts discuss the latest research in this area. Panelists included researchers Drs. Kurt Hager (UMass), Hilary Seligman (UCSF), and Ariana Thompson-Lastad (UCSF) in discussion with Dr. Monica Soni, Chief Medical Officer of Covered California.   Want to jump into the conversation? Join us at the Feb 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting: Advancing the Science of Social Care. Learn more at: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting.   This season of the SIREN Podcast is supported by Kaiser Permanente.

This is the second of a two-part webinar series on implications of the Camden Coalition’s RCT results.  In 2020, a major article on “healthcare hotspotting” may have caught your eye. The article described findings from our four-year, prospective, 800-person randomized evaluation of the Camden Core Model, an innovative and comprehensive approach to care coordination for patients with very high use of healthcare services. The study found no differences in hospital utilization between patients randomly assigned to the Camden Core Model and those who received usual care. In 2023, two secondary analyses were published looking at intervention dosage and engagement. Then teaming back up with MIT’s J-PAL to publish a new analysis, we looked at more intermediate measures of care coordination. These studies help to explain the original RCT’s primary outcomes findings. How do these findings align (or not) with the perspectives of complex care consumers and patient advocates? On May 9th we had a moderated panel with four National Consumer Scholars — advocates and activists with lived experience of complex health and social needs from across the country — as they shared their reactions to and reflections on the RCT findings.    The panel included:  -Pamela Corocan: Policy and regulatory advocate with AARP ME, Maine Women’s Lobby, and Maine Equal Justice  -Nohora Gutierrez: Member of the RIDE (Research, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) Council, and the Next Steps Committee, activist with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and AARP advocate for improving the affordability and availability of specialty medicine for patients with chronic illnesses  -Emily Cowen: Advocate with Kids as Self-advocates (KASA), Youth as Self-advocates (YASA), the Youth Steering Committee, the Caregiver Coalition, and People First of Connecticut  - Carl Boyd: Community Liaison for the Center for Family Services, Parent Leader with New Jersey’s Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Prenatal to Three (ECCS P-3) / Help Me Grow program, Co Chair for the Camden County Council for Young Children  The webinar was moderated by Dawn Wiest, Director of Research and Evaluation at the Camden Coalition   Want to jump into the conversation? Join us at the Feb 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting: Advancing the Science of Social Care. Learn more at: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting.   This season of the SIREN Podcast is supported by Kaiser Permanente.

This is the first of a two-part webinar series on implications of the Camden Coalition’s RCT results.    In 2020, a major article on “healthcare hotspotting” may have caught your eye. It did ours! The article described findings from a four-year, prospective, 800-person randomized evaluation of the Camden Coalition’s Camden Core Model, an innovative and comprehensive approach to care coordination for patients with very high use of healthcare services. The study found no differences in hospital utilization between patients randomly assigned to the Camden Core Model and those who received usual care. In 2023, the Camden Coalition published two secondary analyses looking at intervention dosage and engagement, and they teamed back up with MIT’s J-PAL to publish a new analysis looking at more intermediate measures of care coordination. These studies help to explain the original RCT’s primary outcomes findings.  On April 5, 9-10am PT, participants joined us for a moderated panel discussion with Kathleen Noonan (Camden Coalition), Kedar Mate (Institute for Healthcare Improvement), and Damon Francis (Alameda Health System) about study implications. Prior to the panel conversation, Amy Finkelstein (MIT) and Aaron Truchil (Camden Coalition) briefly presented study findings.   Want to jump into the conversation? Join us at the Feb 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting: Advancing the Science of Social Care. Learn more at: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting.   This season of the SIREN Podcast is supported by Kaiser Permanente.

On March 29, 2024, the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics convened a session of the Organizational Ethics Consortia Series on social care. Addressing health inequity generally requires attention to the most marginalized patients, whose health is often undermined by social, legal and financial challenges. In response, many health care delivery organizations have begun to collect data about health-related social needs and build organizational capacity to address these needs, either “in-house” or through partnerships with community-based organizations. This gives rise to challenging ethical questions: How do we weigh the potential benefits and harms of screening for social needs? And what responsibilities do health care delivery organizations have once they have health-related social need information?How should health care delivery organizations allocate their resources between addressing specific patient needs versus thinking more broadly about community-level social determinants?   Presenters: Monica E. Peek, MD, MPH, MSc, Ellen H. Block Professor of Health Justice, Section of General Internal Medicine; Associate Vice-Chair for Research Faculty Development, Dept of Medicine; Associate Director, Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research; Dir. of Research (Assoc. Director), MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics; Executive Medical Director, Community Health Innovation   Marshall Chin, MD, MPH, Richard Parrillo Family Distinguished Service Professor of Healthcare Ethics in the Department of Medicine, University of Chicago; Associate Director, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics; Co-Director, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Advancing Health Equity: Leading Care, Payment, and Systems Transformation National Program Office; Co-Chair, CMS Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network Health Equity Advisory Team   Laura Gottlieb, MD, MPH, Co-director, Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network (SIREN); Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco   Moderator: Lauren A Taylor, PhD, MDiv, Assistant Professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine   Consortium Co-Chair: Charlotte H. Harrison, PhD, JD, MPH, HEC-C, Co-Chair, Organizational Ethics Consortium, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics; Immediate Past Hospital Ethicist and Director, Office of Ethics, Boston Children’s Hospital   This consortia series provides a forum for local, national, and international discussion of organizational-level ethical issues and processes to address them, with the aim of cultivating a learning community of practitioners and scholars in this evolving field. We are grateful to the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics for making this recording available to the SIREN Podcast audience. To learn more, visit https://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/

On Monday March 11th participants joined us for a conversation about the new SIREN Social Care Conceptual Model! Emerging evidence suggests that social care programs do not affect health solely by connecting patients with social services and reducing socioeconomic barriers. In a recent paperwe used this evidence to develop a model that depicts the multiple pathways through which social care interventions appear to operate. SIREN co-directors Laura Gottlieb, Danielle Hessler, and Caroline Fichtenberg discussed the new model and its implications for future program investments and evaluations.    Want to jump into the conversation? Join us at the Feb 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting: Advancing the Science of Social Care. Learn more at: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting.    This season of the SIREN Podcast is supported by Kaiser Permanente.

Although there is no question that adverse social circumstances negatively impact health and healthcare outcomes, it is not clear what the healthcare sector’s role should be in addressing these adverse social factors. On February 28, 2024, SIREN Co-Director Caroline Fichtenberg moderated a lively discussion with three thought-leaders on their perspectives on this important question:  Seth Berkowitz, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine, UNC School of Medicine Sherry Glied, PhD, MA, Dean and Professor of Public Service, NYU Wagner School of Public Service Stacy Lindau, MD, MA, Catherine Lindsay Dobson Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago School of Medicine  Want to jump into the conversation? Join us at the Feb 2025 SIREN National Research Meeting: Advancing the Science of Social Care. Learn more at: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/2025-national-research-meeting.   This season of the SIREN Podcast is supported by Kaiser Permanente.