Historically social work has played an ancillary role to health professionals. With the Affordable Care Act we have the rare opportunity to be in the forefront of developing care models that truly integrate the person in environment perspective in healthcare delivery. Social workers are uniquely qualified to be the architect of a culturally effective, patient centered integrated care that understands housing, neighborhoods, poverty, oppression are all risk factors in health, and that effective patient treatment requires this knowledge and the ability to see the patient holistically. This challenge is to develop team approaches to person in environment healthcare delivery. The time to develop this new model is now. The leaders are social workers. The outcomes are lower healthcare costs and increased health indicators.
