Social Needs Response Team (SNRT)
Title: Addressing Social Determinants of Health with the Social Needs Response Team
Student Interns:
Sebastian Chung
University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy & Practice
Jasmine Wang
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Academic Preceptor:
Hillary R. Bogner, MD, MSCE
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Donald L. Boyer, MD, MSEd
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Johanna K.P. Greeson, PhD, MSS, MLSP
University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy & Practice
Community Preceptor:
Deborah Lowenstein, LCSW
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Community Site:
Founded during the COVID pandemic, the Social Needs Response Team (SNRT) is a virtual call center that primarily addresses safety, immediate social needs, and distress through patient referrals from the Penn Medicine system. An interdisciplinary team — including nursing, medical, dental, social work professionals, and more — collaborates remotely to directly connect patients to resources and address unmet social needs, including housing, food insecurity, and access to healthcare resources.
Team’s Experience:
The Bridging the Gaps student interns worked with patients to help address a variety of social needs, from food insecurity to health insurance and mental health resources. Each day, the interns were tasked with a list of patient referrals from various outpatient departments at Penn or recently discharged patients seeking assistance. Faced with challenges such as the lack of available resources, loss of funding for resources, or barriers to access for patients, the interns focused not only on trying to come up with solutions and connecting patients directly to resources but also on providing empathetic support and a space for patients to feel heard.
Reflections
“This summer, the Social Needs Response Team assisted the community by connecting individuals with housing, insurance, food, and transportation resources while examining how these needs reflected broader systemic issues. The work highlighted recurring barriers such as the burden of advocacy on individuals, inadequate funding, liability-driven policies, historic racism, and gentrification. Through resource navigation and documentation, the team identified patterns that tied individual struggles to larger structural problems. This experience provided insight into how disorganized city budgeting and limited social investment deepen inequities, fostering a clearer understanding of Philadelphia’s challenges and informing future approaches to systemic advocacy and social work practice. It also emphasized the importance of addressing not only immediate needs but also the policies and structures that create them.”
Sebastian Chung
“Working at SNRT this summer was a very enlightening experience, as it felt like a constant battle between the extreme need for resources that patients were experiencing and the severe lack of programs and resources available to them. There’s no question that people in Philly and the surrounding area face disparities when it comes to health equity and overall social determinants of health, but SNRT placed those challenges directly in front of us. Whether it was learning how to support patients emotionally through difficult times, learning about existing resources, or trying to come up with creative ways of addressing problems, I think I gained many tools that I will be able to bring to my own patients when I am practicing. The difficulty of this work also reminded me that there is still a need for advocacy to support existing resources and call for the funding of many more.”
Jasmine Wang