SUPPORTED BY A GRANT FROM THE DONALD A. PELS CHARITABLE TRUST
Beginning in early 2022, UHF convened a task force consisting of leaders from New York health care organizations to help coordinate efforts in improving health equity and health care quality.
Why This Is Important
Despite the attention inequities in health and health care have received during the COVID-19 pandemic, stark differences in access, care, and outcomes remain. Although more is now known about the causes—including structural racism—interventions implemented so far have not meaningfully diminished differences in clinical outcomes and the care received by Black, Latine, Asian, and American Indian patients compared to white patients. As a result, troubling disparities persist. For example, the maternal mortality rate for Black women in New York State is more than five times the rate for white women.
Our Work
Led by UHF’s Quality Institute, the project brought together 24 quality and equity leaders across New York health care organizations to share ideas and examples of interventions, aiming to ensure that equity is specifically prioritized in improvement strategies system wide.
Over 18 months, the task force worked to develop a framework for embedding equity in efforts to improve quality in the delivery of health care. This framework and other learnings from their collaboration will be published by UHF in an upcoming report.
The report identifies the drivers of health equity and suggests ways for health care organizations to embed equity into organizational quality strategies. These recommendations are supported by examples of innovative practices being led by the task force members in their own health systems.
Spotlight Series
Several exceptional examples of how the task force members were already bridging quality improvement and equity in their health systems were shared over the course of the project. These were explored in-depth and summarized into the series of Spotlight articles below. The series is organized into four themes: incorporating social determinants of health (SDoH) into clinical care models; patient engagement and co-design; improving capacity for SDoH screening and referrals; and investing in the community. We hope these examples can offer other health care providers ideas for how to better bridge quality improvement and equity efforts.