The U.S. pours money into health care, then holds back on social services. But those services often can do more to improve health.

What Amy Kind observed during her residency as a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston often frustrated and angered her.

She could admit a poor person to the hospital again and again, each time potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars.

“Yet changing someone’s ability to have safe housing — even getting an air conditioner for someone with breathing problems — was not something I could do,” said Kind, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.