Centering Equity Initiative

The Centering Equity Initiative was launched in 2021 in response to member concerns that the current system of knowledge and intervention development, financing and insurance, and health care services delivery has failed to create and sustain health for the full diversity of the American general public.

• The current system construct serves to increase patient risk in service to financial risk mitigation and to assign differential value to different populations and patient cohorts.

• Efforts to reform the current system to redress inequalities, disparities, and inequities have been ineffective. What has been effective is efforts to pathologize the behavior and lived experience of those whose health is compromised and lives shortened by this structural, systemic failure.

Activities

Centering Equity Survey

The Institute for Equity’s Centering Equity Survey was fielded via key stakeholders. The major analysis methodology utilized sample size determination and cross-tabulation analyses, both of which were used to investigate and analyze the relationships between key demographic data and the 14 various healthcare services and treatment variables included in the survey instrument. The racial and ethnic diversity of survey respondents reflects the positive reputation and trust that the Institute for Equity at the National Minority Quality Forum has earned and established. All responses were voluntary, anonymous and confidential.

The diversity in the organizations and companies represented by the respondents allowed for richer analyses of the perspectives shared about why and how to systematically center equity.

Thought Leaders Roundtable

Convened by the Institute for Equity on April 7, 2022 to recommend strategies to incentivize innovation and investment in health care that centers equity in every sector and throughout the research, financing and delivery systems loop. 

Areas of Consensus:

• The United States will fail to achieve health equity if continues to prioritize financial risk mitigation over patient risk.

• Centering equity will improve the quality and outcomes of care populations, especially minoritized populations and women of color.

• The factors contributing to systemwide equity are interlinked and can serve to incentivize or disrupt efforts to redress inequities. Multi-pronged, upstream approaches are essential.
• Leadership from all sectors must develop a new narrative that describes a research, delivery and financing system that centers equity as its central pillar, is forward-looking, intentional and accountable.

Centering Equity Advisory Board

Identify potential case studies of policies and practices that create or exacerbate inequity, e.g., value assessment, clinical risk assessment tools (breast cancer, cognitive impairment, intensity of service algorithms, data gaps, process and outcome metrics.