Connecting Families to What They Need: UCSF Leads $11M Trial for Hospitalized Children
When a child is hospitalized, families are often already carrying invisible burdens – worrying about how to afford food, secure stable housing, or find transportation to follow-up appointments.
With over two million pediatric hospitalizations in the United States each year, these needs are widespread, and discharge doesn’t make them disappear. Families return home with the same challenges, now intensified by the demands of a child's recovery.
UCSF is leading one of the first large-scale efforts to rigorously test how hospitals can address these needs. The Social Needs Assistance for Hospitalized Kids (SNAK) Trial, led by Matt Pantell, MD, MS, professor in the UCSF Division of Pediatric Hospital Medicine, will compare approaches across six hospitals nationwide. The trial is supported by a nearly $11 million funding award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
One Question, Two Approaches
Hospitals often screen families for social risk factors, but what happens next varies widely. Some families receive a list of resources and must reach out on their own. Others get more hands-on support. The SNAK Trial will compare these two approaches head-to-head to determine which leads to better outcomes for children and families.
In one arm, families will receive a resource sheet listing community-based organizations in their area — a passive referral. In the other, families will work directly with a trained navigator to connect to resources over three months. Navigators in the SNAK Trial will have deep knowledge of local community resources and be trained to connect families with help tailored to their needs.
“When a child is in the hospital, their family is already connected to the healthcare system — often for days at a time," says Pantell. "That's a window when we can identify social needs and actually help families access support, rather than leaving it to them to find it on their own after discharge.”
Caregivers as Research Partners
What makes the SNAK Trial distinctive isn't just its scale — it's who is designing it. Two caregiver co-investigators, Fabiola Dueñas and Stephanie Madole, are part of the research team, bringing firsthand experience as parents of hospitalized children.
"I know firsthand that when your child is in the hospital, every little thing matters," says Dueñas. "We want to find the best ways to connect inpatient parents to meaningful resources to help ease the emotional and financial stress of the journey."
While Dueñas reflects on the experience inside the hospital, Madole focuses on what follows families home.
"Families often leave the hospital carrying much more than paperwork. Many are also navigating housing instability, food access, transportation barriers, and the stress of caring for a sick child," Madole says. "Our participation in SNAK keeps the project grounded in the voices and experiences of caregivers, helping guide the research to solutions that are practical and truly supportive for families.”
From Evidence to Practice
Over the next several years, the trial will enroll caregivers of hospitalized children across all six sites, screening every family for social risk factors and tracking how both health and social outcomes change over time. The team will also interview caregivers and staff at community-based organizations to identify what helps families successfully connect, and what prevents them from doing so.
“Right now, how hospitals respond to social needs depends largely on where a family happens to live and which hospital they walk into," says Pantell. "This trial is designed to generate the evidence that makes effective social care a standard part of pediatric hospital care — not just at our six sites, but everywhere."
For families, the difference between receiving a list of resources and having someone help them access those services could shape how their child recovers — and whether they return to the hospital at all.
The SNAK Trial Team
Principal Investigator: Matt Pantell, MD, MS
Co-Investigators: Suni Kaiser, MD, MSc, Laura Gottlieb, MD, MPH, Danielle Hessler Jones, PhD, and John Neuhaus, PhD, MS, MS from UCSF; Michelle Lopez, MD, MPH, from Baylor College of Medicine
Caregiver Co-Investigators: Fabiola Dueñas and Stephanie Madole
Clinical Research Coordinators: Holly Wing, MA (Project Manager), Isabella Fornell, Nancy Yang, and Nathan Tran
Community Liaison: Philip Herrera
Hospital Sites and Site Principal Investigators: Benioff Children's Hospital – Oakland: Bella Doshi, MD | Benioff Children's Hospital – San Francisco: Nora Pfaff, MD | Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital: Mabel Chan, MD | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Aditi Vasan, MD, MSHP, and Michael Luke, MD, MSHP | Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital (Houston): Sheela Gavvala, DO | Texas Children's Hospital – West Campus (Houston): Marina Masciale, MD, MPH
For more information, contact [email protected].
The SNAK Trial is funded by PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), a nonprofit organization with a mission to fund patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research designed to provide patients and those who care for them with evidence to make better-informed healthcare decisions.