Accomplishments

Advancing health equity in a country with a complex medical ecosystem like the United States is not a task for the faint of heart. In our first iteration as Finding Answers and now, as Advancing Health Equity, we have never wavered in our commitment to eradicating health and healthcare inequities. AHE has had multiple notable accomplishments over the last several years, including:

• Creating opportunities for informal, in-depth conversations about healthy equity, justice, and inclusion.
• Expanding the conversation on inclusivity as it relates to people with disabilities.
• Providing a guide with tips and answers to common questions about how to incorporate inclusive language in our workspaces.
• Publishing papers about: enacting anti-racist payment reform, using liberation psychology to eliminate health and healthcare inequities; and how to use the concept of Emergent Strategy to enhance our communication and teambuilding skills.
• Welcoming five more Learning Collaborative teams to attend our cross-team learning sessions, receive technical assistance and feedback about proposed healthcare innovations, and our range of in-person and online meetings.

In October 2023, AHE held its first in-person convening since the start of the global pandemic. We collaborated on one of the most pressing issues of our time: discovering best practices for advancing #healthequity by fostering payment reform and sustainable care models to eliminate health and healthcare inequities for good. While there still is much work to be done, we are on a path #forwardtogether.

Click on the tab below to learn more about the accomplishments of Findings Answers.

Finding Answers, the precursor to Advancing Health Equity, was the first national program of its kind. It had a specific focus on practical strategies to reduce disparities. Notable accomplishments of the Finding Answers program include: 

• Charting a Future Without Health Care Disparities. Created by the National Program Office at the end of the project’s first phase, this accessible overview posits six “truths” about the difficult work of creating an evidence-based framework to improve health equity.
• The Roadmap to Reduce Disparities. Created by the National Program Office, the Roadmap to Reduce Disparities synthesizes lessons learned from Finding Answers’ 33 grantee projects, 11 systematic reviews of the disparities-reduction literature, and technical assistance to healthcare organizations. This one-of-a-kind framework guides clinics and hospitals through the process of designing and implementing programs to reduce disparities. 
• Systematic reviews of the disparities literature. The National Program Office along with academic partners at the University of Chicago, collaborated on 11 disease-specific disparities systematic reviews, published in three special publications: a 2007 supplement to Medical Care Research and Review, a 2009 issue of Pediatrics, and a 2012 Symposium in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
• Practical recommendations for regional quality improvement collaboratives. This article explores equity in regional quality improvement collaboratives, including practical recommendations for incorporating equity into quality improvement programs, published in the American Journal of Managed Care in 2012.

“The Program office did a really nice job of trying to synthesize and tell a cohesive story across all of the funded projects – pulling out the emergent themes and putting forth an overarching principle or framework that others could use going forward.”                                         

– Romana Hasnain-Wynia, National Advisory Committee Member

• Overview of 30 years of disparities interventions. In 2013, the National Program Office published an analysis of three decades of disparities intervention research in Medical Care. This article built on the 2007 & 2012 systematic reviews and identified gaps in disparities intervention research and promising avenues for future research.
• Technical assistance partnerships with national programs. Finding Answers provided technical assistance, in partnership with Aligning Forces for Quality to select health care organizations that were working to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. The program also teamed up with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and TMF Health Quality Institute to provide a series of four webinars on reducing health care disparities, shared decision-making, patient experience and care management, through the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative. 
• Program evaluation of 33 health care organizations. Finding Answers funded the evaluation of 33 interventions around the US that aimed to reduce racial and ethnic health care disparities in the areas of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and depression. The evaluation summaries offer ideas for interventions, best practices, and what works – and doesn’t work – when reducing disparities.
• Raise the profile of disparities on a national level via academic and social media discussions. Finding Answers has conducted many workshops, seminars, and conference presentations, including at national convenings such as SGIM, AAMC and the National Association of Community Health Centers. Moreover, the national program office hosted monthly Twitter chats, in partnership with other QI programs and organizations to generate discussion and create a platform for idea sharing, best-practices, and discussing challenges and opportunities with equity work.