With the new year comes a new cohort of Advancing Health Equity (AHE) Learning Collaborative teams working together to identify and eliminate inequities in health and healthcare.
On January 11-12, 2023, state teams from the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, and Pennsylvania will join the existing AHE teams from Delaware, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington for AHE’s two-day, All-Team Convening. Teams are comprised of state Medicaid agencies, Medicaid health plans, health care delivery organizations, and community partners. In their effort to design programs that accurately reflect the needs and concerns of the communities they serve, incoming Learning Collaborative (LC) teams have committed to designing interventions that center the voices of those with lived experience of Medicaid. “At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation we are so grateful to these leaders for leaning into a commitment to both institutional and operational changes that champion health equity,” said Andrea Ducas, Senior Program Officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “This work is not easy, but it’s critical to transforming the healthcare system in ways that are actually meaningful to people.”
About the Advancing Health Equity Learning Collaborative
Joining the AHE Learning Collaborative places the 12 participating teams at the vanguard of advancing health equity. Over two years, AHE LC teams will design and begin implementing an integrated health care delivery and payment reform initiative to reduce health and healthcare inequities. Teams will address social drivers of health and share best practices through peer-to-peer learning opportunities. LC teams receive tailored technical assistance from AHE’s experts in health, medicine, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. AHE will share lessons learned, best practices, and policy recommendations for local and national dissemination gleaned from its work with the teams.
Making the Case for Advancing Health Equity
Most organizations need a strong business case to justify expending the resources to advance equity in patient care and health outcomes. Value-based payment models that intentionally reward advancing health equity and the quality of care may be a key strategy in creating that business case; however, state Medicaid agencies, health plans, health care delivery organizations, and communities are in the early stages of learning how to design such models. “The 12 state Learning Collaborative teams are innovators who will use care transformation and payment reform to advance health equity in partnership with communities,” said AHE National Program Office Co-Director Marshall Chin, MD, MPH, of the University of Chicago. “All people should receive the care they need to live healthy lives.”