Data and community partnerships: the next steps to addressing healthcare inequity
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught healthcare providers a lot about how they fall short in terms of quality and access. Next year is an opportunity to put those lessons into practice.
This insight is influencing how providers are preparing to tackle long-standing issues of inequity among the populations they serve, experts say.
To overcome disparities and provide equal access to testing and vaccines, healthcare professionals have attempted to meet residents of vulnerable, underserved and marginalized communities where they are.
Many health systems have tailored their language to be culturally and linguistically appropriate when educating individuals about vaccine efficacy, and set up mobile vaccination efforts, drive-through clinics and mass vaccination sites. Others have expanded walk-in appointment availability and extended facility hours to be more easily accessible.
“These inequities have been generations in the making,” said Dr. Carol Horowitz, co-director of the Institute for Health Equity Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “And it’s not going to take us 2022 to fix them. We need to have some patience, and we have to keep at it.”
Providers will look to build on the successes they notched by engaging further with their communities, said Kalpana Ramiah, vice president of innovation and director of the Essential Hospitals Institute, an arm of America’s Essential Hospitals, the lobbying group for safety-net hospitals.
Partnering with local organizations to actively address social determinants of health such as housing, food and transportation helps facilities mitigate public mistrust, build permanent relationships and develop longterm healthcare strategies, Horowitz said.
Collecting more data about inequities in the healthcare system is a second key component.
Looking at genomic, clinical, demographic and other information will allow providers to deepen their understanding of socioeconomic factors and address patient vulnerabilities, said Dr. John Frownfelter, chief medical officer at Jvion, an artificial intelligence software vendor.
Most importantly, healthcare leaders must be held accountable to their pledges to foster equity. This means ensuring efforts go beyond revising mission statements and conducting brief diversity trainings to developing inclusive recruitment protocols and actively intervening where inequities exist in communities, said Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, vice president for advancing health equity at the Commonwealth Fund.
Providers looking to address disparities will also need to promote public policies that would bolster their efforts. Extending pandemic-era policies easing access to telehealth for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries is one example. Advocates also are pressing Congress to act on more components of the so-called Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act that seeks to address poor outcomes for Black mothers and children. This month, President Joe Biden signed into law a portion of that package aimed at military veterans.