A United Hospital Fund task force focused on integrating equity in efforts to improve health care quality has wrapped up a year of productive meetings, setting the stage for its findings to spur promising change in tackling health inequities.
The Bridging Quality and Equity Task Force, formed in 2022, held its fourth and final meeting on July 31 at UHF’s office. In addition to discussing the content and potential impact of its final report, participants brainstormed future equity-focused projects that might stem from the group’s work. The equity task force comprises 24 quality and equity leaders from New York health care organizations.
“This is truly an example of what collaboration across New York City can look like,” said task force member Eric Wei, MD, senior vice president and chief quality officer at NYC Health + Hospitals, noting that equity is not an outcome that health care systems should compete on. “I've learned and grown so much through this... and the work is not done, this is just the start.”
Among the final report components emerging from the task force deliberations is a visual diagram outlining seven organizational drivers of health equity identified over the past year. The diagram includes both principles for addressing these drivers and examples of interventions and projects currently underway in New York City institutions gathered through the task force.
Members noted at the final meeting that the diagram could provide an important guide for health care institutions working to prioritize equity in system-wide quality strategies.
“For organizations who may have not done this work, it at least gives people a place to start and interrogate a little bit more what’s possible in their organization,” said one task force member.
The final meeting also featured a presentation from David A. Ansell, MD, MPH, senior vice president for community health equity at Rush University Medical Center. Dr. Ansell and his team outlined a racial equity in health care progress report they developed for and with health care institutions, which is now being scaled nationwide with a grant from the Commonwealth Fund.
Helping form a New York City cohort of institutions to participate in the equity progress report’s nationwide pilot program is among the UHF task force’s potential future projects.
United Hospital Fund will release the Bridging Quality and Equity final report later this year, along with a series of case vignettes of promising strategies and interventions.
The task force is managed by UHF’s Quality Institute and supported by the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust.