Purpose
CommonHelpSource helps a worker or community member organize a possible social need and identify practical starting points. The assessments are navigation aids. They are not eligibility determinations, clinical diagnoses, legal advice, emergency dispatch, or substitutes for a licensed professional or an administering agency.
Question design
Priority social-needs questions are informed by publicly available federal screening frameworks, especially the CMS Accountable Health Communities Health-Related Social Needs tool. The CMS framework emphasizes living situation, food, transportation, utilities, and safety. CommonHelpSource adds operational questions—such as deadlines, documents, household composition, and access barriers—to make a referral plan more useful.
Where a question is adapted or aligned with a published framework, the assessment and this methodology identify that relationship. We do not describe the full CommonHelpSource workflow as a validated instrument. Modifications, extra questions, and automated action planning mean results should not be interpreted as a standardized score unless an exact scoring method is explicitly provided.
Priority and safety logic
Deterministic rules identify situations that should be handled before routine benefit navigation. Examples include immediate danger, current unsheltered homelessness, eviction proceedings, a disconnected utility, electricity-dependent medical equipment, and no food available now. These rules set the order of the plan; they do not decide the outcome.
Local-resource process
The system resolves a five-digit U.S. or Puerto Rico ZIP code to a locality, searches for relevant agencies, and asks the AI service to structure five phased contacts. Each resource must include an organization name, official website, source URL, and a documented address or service area. Direct phone numbers are included only when supported; otherwise the result says to use the official website.
Low-quality directory and social-media sources are rejected by the response validator. Puerto Rico is handled as a territory with its own agencies and benefit names rather than being mapped to a mainland state.
Confidence labels
- Verified: a maintained local plan was checked against authoritative sources on the displayed date.
- Automatically researched: the response has complete contact and source fields but still requires a call or official-site check.
- Limited or fallback: a local match could not be responsibly confirmed, so the plan uses an official locator or statewide entry point.
Human review standard
Before sharing a result, review whether it reflects the answers, prioritizes the person’s stated goal, uses the correct locality, and avoids unsupported conclusions. Open each source, confirm service area and program status, and call before travel. For documentation or diagnostic support, verify every clinical statement, code, citation, and recommendation.
Privacy boundary
Assessment and narrative inputs may be processed by external AI and infrastructure providers to generate the requested result. Do not enter direct identifiers or protected health information. The service is not presented as a HIPAA-covered record system. See the privacy policy and our de-identification guide.
Review team framework
CommonHelpSource is seeking reviewers rather than claiming approvals it does not yet have. A responsible review group should include:
- a community health worker with direct navigation experience;
- a licensed social worker or qualified clinical supervisor for clinical boundaries;
- a benefits or legal-services navigator for eligibility and referral language;
- a privacy and security professional;
- an accessibility reviewer, including disability and language-access perspectives;
- a community member with lived experience using assistance systems.
Reviewers should document the version reviewed, conflicts of interest, requested changes, and the date of the next review. To participate, use the contact form without including client information.
Corrections and review cycle
Resource information should be rechecked when a user reports a problem, when an official source changes, and on a scheduled rotation for maintained local plans. Use the resource-correction form for a closed, incorrect, or out-of-area listing. Methodology and screening language should receive at least an annual review and an earlier review after a material policy, safety, or evidence change.