Silhouettes of hikers reaching a high point Using technology to target health disparities

The Mayo Clinic HOUSES Program offers services to capture individual-level socioeconomic status.

Overview

The Mayo Clinic Housing-Based Socioeconomic Status (HOUSES) Program has developed, validated, and implemented a novel index for measuring individual socioeconomic status (SES) based on housing features. Young J. Juhn, M.D., M.P.H., with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, leads the HOUSES Program. The program's mission is to support health research, care and policy pursuing health care delivery in the personal and social context of people and populations through scientific and technological innovation. The aim is to maximize health potential for people and populations across all socioeconomic backgrounds and eliminate health disparities.

The Mayo Clinic HOUSES Program enables large-scale, objective measurements of patient-level social determinants of health through scientific and technological innovation. These analyses serve to enhance Mayo Clinic's capability to pursue high-value care and high-quality research.

Goals of the Mayo Clinic HOUSES Program include:

  • Pursuing methodological innovation.
  • Understanding the mechanisms underlying health disparities and differences.
  • Translating scientific evidence into practice and policy.
  • Enabling precision medicine for population health.