From SDOH to Student Success Metrics: What VPSAs Want to See
When students don’t have stable housing, reliable food, or safe transportation, it shows up fast. This is seen in missed appointments, dropped classes, and withdrawals.
These basic needs barriers (often called social determinants of health, or SDOH) are becoming a student success issue, not just a health issue.
This post breaks down a simple metrics ladder campus health, counseling, and student affairs teams can use to report progress—without overpromising causation.
Why Vice Presidents of Student Affairs (VPSAs) care about SDOH data (and why your clinic should too)
SDOH are the non-medical factors that shape health—like housing, food access, safety, and transportation.
For instance, in a college setting, those conditions often show up as:
- Missed medical or counseling appointments
- Anxiety, depression, or stress worsened by financial strain
- Medication nonadherence when students can’t afford prescriptions or transportation
- Class disruption or missed time due to housing or work instability
For VPSAs, these patterns are early warning signs of student disengagement. If a campus can connect SDOH trends to student success metrics (like retention, course completion rates, or time-to-degree), it becomes easier to justify investments in basic needs programs, care coordination, and staffing.
The “metrics ladder” VPSAs want: from need to action to outcomes
A common mistake is jumping from “we screened students” to “retention improved.” VPSAs want the steps in between: need, action, engagement, and outcomes.
Here’s a campus-ready metrics ladder that works well across health clinics, counseling centers, and student affairs.
1) Need metrics: What barriers are students reporting?
These metrics help leaders understand demand and equity gaps.
Examples:
- % of students screening positive by category (food, housing, transportation, safety)
- Trend lines by term (e.g., “food insecurity rose during the Fall semester”)
- Breakouts by class year, commuter status, or international student status
If you need a validated starting point, use a standard SDOH screener such as CMS AHC HRSN or PRAPARE) and keep categories consistent across terms.
2) Action metrics: What did we do when needs were identified?
This is where clinics and counseling centers can show operational follow-through.
Examples:
- % of positive screens that received a resource list or referral
- Time from positive screen → outreach
- Referral acceptance rate (student agrees to receive help)
- Warm handoff completion rate (student successfully connected to a person/program)
These metrics show follow-through—without implying your campus can solve every need.
3) Engagement metrics: Did students stay connected to care and support?
Moreover, VPSAs care deeply about whether services are accessible and sticky. Engagement is often the bridge between SDOH work and student success metrics.
Examples:
- Kept appointment rate (before vs. after resource connection)
- No-show rate among students with identified needs
- Follow-up completion rate for referrals (e.g., counseling follow-up within 14 days)
- Utilization of basic needs services after referral
Clinic example: If transportation is causing missed visits, small changes—bus passes, telehealth, or schedule flexibility—can increase kept-appointment rates quickly (even before retention shifts).
4) Outcome metrics: What changed in student success?
This is the layer VPSAs ultimately want, but it’s strongest when paired with the earlier steps.
Examples:
- Term-to-term retention among students who received support vs. those who didn’t
- Credit completion ratio after intervention (especially for high-need cohorts)
- Withdrawal timing patterns tied to basic needs spikes (often midterm season)
- Student-reported well-being or belonging measures (when aligned with institutional assessment)
You won’t always be able to claim causation—but you can show directional improvement and reduced risk, which is often enough to guide resource decisions and strategy.
Think of outcomes as reduced risk and directional improvement, not a single silver-bullet claim.
What makes metrics “VPSA-ready”: clarity, comparability, and context
To be useful at the administrative level, student success metrics tied to SDOH data should be:
- Simple: 6–10 metrics that fit on one slide
- Comparable: track over time (this term vs. last term)
- Equity-aware: show whether gaps are narrowing for specific populations
- Operationally actionable: each metric has an owner and a next step
A VPSA-ready starter set (8 metrics):
- % screened (by term)
- % positive screens (by category)
- Time to outreach after a positive screen
- % receiving referral/resources
- Warm handoff completion rate
- No-show rate (SDOH-positive cohort)
- Follow-up within 14 days (medical or counseling)
- Retention or credit completion (supported vs. not)
This is also where cross-campus partnership matters. For example, student affairs may own emergency aid and basic needs programming; clinics and counseling centers often own mental health screening and clinical follow-up. Shared metrics and reporting bring the two together.
How to report this without hiring more staff
The most practical approach is collect once, use many times, reduce duplicate entry and let systems route tasks.
A few workflow principles that protect staff time:
- Let students self-report in a secure portal (and explain why you ask)
- Route positive screens into a task queue—don’t rely on manual flags
- Document interventions using quick templates (resource list, referral, follow-up scheduled)
- Review trends monthly, quarterly, or each semester—SDOH metrics are a strategy tool, not a crisis management dashboard
Key Takeaways
VPSAs don’t just want more SDOH screening—they want a line of sight from needs to action to student success metrics.
Start with a small, validated screener, track response and engagement, and then connect that data to retention and completion outcomes.
When clinics, counseling centers, and student affairs share definitions and a lightweight reporting cadence, SDOH data becomes a practical tool for equity, retention, and smarter resource allocation.
Related reads:
