AHE Roadmap Implementation Center

Welcome to AHE’s Roadmap Implementation Center (RIC), a comprehensive platform that provides practical materials and instructions to put the Roadmap into action in your own organization or a multi-organization collaborative. The following FAQs will tell you everything you need to know to use the RIC.  After the FAQs you will find links to Implementation Center resources for each component of the Roadmap. 

Where should I start and how should I work through the RIC?

Each Roadmap component builds upon previous components, expanding and reinforcing them. Completing each component thoughtfully and thoroughly is essential for maximizing the chances that you will successfully reduce and eliminate health and healthcare inequities. Start with the Foundational Activities component. It will help your team set clear goals, define roles, and foster effective collaboration. We strongly recommend that teams regularly revisit and update their foundational activities while working on other parts of the Roadmap. Advancing health equity is a long-term endeavor and the Foundational Activities will help your team revise and update goals, team structure, team member roles, and operations as needed.

Next, begin the Create Cultures of Equity component. The concepts and activities introduced in Create Cultures of Equity are key to success for all other components of the Roadmap. Understanding how they work and how to apply them is critical. Identifying a Health Equity Focus is the most appropriate next step. From there, teams should continue working through the AHE Roadmap Components from top to bottom as represented in the Roadmap.

Utilize the Essential Elements simultaneously with every other component of the Roadmap. These elements—partnering with patients and community-based organizations, obtaining and maintaining stakeholder buy-in, and anticipating data challenges—represent important activities critical to success.Your work will be more difficult and less likely to succeed if you do not attend to them. For example, the team should begin identifying stakeholders and working to earn their engagement while identifying a health equity focus.  In addition, identifying a health equity focus often leads to data challenges that you can anticipate and prepare for in advance.  Finally, you will set yourself up for long-term success if you take the time early on to partner with patients and community-based organizations. Remember to utilize the tools and recommendations in the Essential Elements every time you begin a new component of the Roadmap. While it may create some additional work in the short term. it will pay significant dividends in the long-term.

What is the best way to work through the RIC?

Carefully weigh the pros and cons of skipping or minimizing any component of the Roadmap. While some teams may need to complete some Roadmap components in a different order, we strongly encourage all teams to complete each one. Each Roadmap component is evidence based and serves a critical purpose. Skipping Roadmap components will decrease your chances of meeting your goals.

If you must delay completion of a component, develop a plan for when and how to complete it. For example, a team may be forced to skip Partnering with Patients and Communities when working through Diagnosing Root Causes with an Equity Lens and Prioritizing Root Causes. However, skipping that Essential Element will reduce their chances of successfully reducing or eliminating the identified inequities or limit how much they are able to reduce the inequities. In such a case, the team should always partner with patients and communities later to enhance and update their root cause analysis, re-prioritize the root causes for intervention and then utilize those changes to update and improve their care and payment transformation model.

How can my team gauge progress and success?

The Goal and Objective Setting tool linked below will help your team track their progress toward AHE Roadmap Component’s goals. Your team will establish high-level goals in its team charter as part of the AHE Roadmap’s Foundational Activities.  In addition, implementing each component of the Roadmap requires establishing a complementary set of goals that can be thought of as process goals and objectives that will help your team achieve high-level goals defined in the charter.  For example, a team might set a charter goal of eliminating rural and urban disparities in the percentage of patients with successfully controlled hypertension. They might also set goals of partnering closely with care team members and patients when completing the Root Cause Analysis with an Equity Lens component of the Roadmap.  

How long will it take to work through RIC materials?

Health equity transformation is a long-term process—there is no one-size-fits-all timeline. The estimated timelines provided throughout the Roadmap are meant as general guidance, but every organization will move at its own pace depending on its health equity focus, structure, capacity, the presence of other competing and synergistic priorities, and external factors such as social drivers of health related to the health equity focus. Many organizations find themselves revisiting different components of the Roadmap multiple times as they learn more, refine their approach, and adapt to emerging challenges and opportunities.

Advancing health equity requires continuous learning and adaptation. Teams often cycle back through earlier phases of the Roadmap as they gain deeper insights into why and how specific inequities occur in their communities and organizations, refine care transformation models, and adjust payment strategies. This iterative process is a natural and necessary part of embedding equity into healthcare systems in a sustainable way.

What are some tips for staying organized?

Teams should save all of their work, including their team charter, in a centralized drive or folder. This way, all team members can access the material whenever necessary to review, revise, and update key documents. As teams evolve, future members can access material to learn about the initiative and how it operates.

Where can we find more support if we have questions?

For more information about AHE’s TA Technical Assistance, please see the AHE Technical Assistance Guide. You can also reach us directly at: info@solvingdisparities.org.