Social Programs Can Show Economic Impact.
Social programs can show economic impact.
Today's social problems can have real economic consequences – so why aren't they being effectively measured and reported?
The Marion-Polk Community Health Improvement Plan for 2021-2025 did an excellent job describing the problems and establishing priorities and plans to improve. But if costs and benefits are not explicitly part of the improvement plan, we have nothing more than loving kindness to drive solutions. That is not enough. Everyone needs to know how this affects them.
Of course, economic impact is not easy to calculate accurately, but many costs are captured. One example is Marin County, California. Under the 5-year whole-person care pilot, the public health department showed medical expenditures at the program's start were $65,000 per year for each chronically homeless person. During the five years of that program, using county-supported social system integration, that number fell along with an overall annual reduction in Medicaid cost.
The short- and long-term costs of social problems affect our ability to educate our children and ensure the community's future. The specific cost that education experiences dealing with socially compromised students could be tracked over time – while social systems track critical assessments associated with social improvement. On the one hand, we begin to create economic cost data and, on the other, an early measure of the economic impact of social intervention.
Some assessments, such as the self-sufficiency matrix, regularly performed within a shared community care plan, provide a way to connect measurable costs with a measurable self-sufficiency status within the community. From that point, we align multiple providers in a single open-ended community-level shared care plan to help these individuals and families contribute to the local economy. With the infrastructure in place, we can track and optimize economic impact.
This plan is early, but the network is available, and along with the costs we can already measure, it is an excellent place to start.
Curandi's role is to support social service providers' capability and align their work toward measurable and meaningful outcomes. That process helps us understand the networks that drive dysfunctional systemic behavior and serves as a platform for real change.