In this interview, Amy O’Sullivan, PhD, discusses key insights from her ISPOR 2025 panel on the readiness of social determinants of health data for clinical and research applications, emphasizing the growing evidence base, the need for thoughtful data collection, and the importance of translating findings into actionable interventions.

Please introduce yourself by stating your name, title, and any relevant experience you’d like to share.

Amy O'Sullivan, PhD: Good afternoon. My name is Amy O'Sullivan. I serve as chief research officer at Ontada. Ontada is a McKesson business that is focused on using real-world data to improve patient outcomes in oncology.

Can you provide an overview of your panel at ISPOR 2025?

Dr O’Sullivan: At ISPOR 2025, I was involved with a panel—we call it an issues panel—with a couple of colleagues to debate whether or not social determinants of health data are ready for primetime. The way that this works is that I argued that social determinants of health data are ready for primetime, and my colleague Daniel Mullins from the University of Maryland in Baltimore argued that they maybe aren't ready for primetime.

From your perspective, what are the key indicators that show we've turned a corner in the quality or utility of social determinants of health data?

Dr O'Sullivan: In terms of my argument for why these data are ready for use in primetime, as we said, was because of the fact that the research on the effects of social determinants of health on health outcomes and health indicators has dramatically increased over the past 5 or 10 years. [As a result,] we do have quite a base of research now that helps us understand the relationship between some of the social determinants of health and indicators of health and health outcomes. It certainly gives us a starting point. It's not to say that we are all the way there, but we have enough data now to be able to draw some conclusions.

What would you like to see next in terms of innovation or collaboration to advance the use of social determinants of health data in both clinical care and research?

Dr O’Sullivan: That's a great question. It's challenging because social determinants of health, which are defined as nonmedical factors that affect health outcomes, are things like where you live, access to health care, food insecurity, access to transportation, income, education, and some of these things can be sensitive to collect from individuals. Individuals tend to be skeptical about providing this information, especially when they're not sure how that information is going to be used.

In terms of how we can continue to raise the bar in collecting some of this information, we need, first and foremost, to educate both patients and providers. These are the folks from whom we're trying to gather these data, and educate them on how we plan to use the data—that we intend to use the data to improve outcomes for patients.

We also want to be exploring various ways in which we can collect the data. It could be from patients themselves within the context of a clinic visit. It could be through patient surveys outside of the health care system. It could be through other means, census data, and so forth.

The last thing I'll say in terms of being able to continue to improve the data collection is we have to be ready to do something with that information. In other words, if the data that we are using for research indicate that there are inequities and health disparities in terms of how these determinants of health are affecting health outcomes for people, we have to be ready with interventions and be able to do things that will then fix the underlying challenges that exist.

Is there anything else you hope audiences took away from this panel?

Dr O’Sullivan: We are really excited about the interest that people had in the panel. We had a lot of engagement and interest from researchers who want to start to get more involved in this research or who have ongoing research that want to bring social determinants of health measures into their research.

Continuing to make sure that people stay interested in this is really important in terms of health equity and making sure that everybody has opportunity to reach the highest level of health outcomes that are possible with today's interventions. I would just say continued interest in the topic, continued interest in improving data collection, and, as I said, designing interventions to address anything that we find within the data [are important takeaways].