Eliminating Disparities Through Community and Hospital Partnerships

While the poorer health status of minority populations can be attributed to social, physical, economic, and political factors, as well as lack of access to medical care, there is more to the story than that. What is striking is what happens once minorities enter the health care system. Mounting evidence indicates that differential treatment of minority populations within the health care system contributes to poorer health outcomes--even after controlling for income, education, type of insurance, and severity of illness.

HRET is conducting a study to determine what factors are resulting in disparities in health outcomes among members of lower socioeconomic strata as well as racial and ethnic minorities.

Funding: The Commonwealth Fund, Consortium Members

Consortium Members: Henry Ford Health Systems, Kaiser Permanente, Massachusetts General Hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Parkland Memorial Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health System.

HRET has taken a lead role in our nation's effort to eliminate disparities in health care. With support from the Commonwealth Fund, HRET has convened a consortium of six leading hospitals and health systems to take a leading role in addressing this serious issue.

Phase 1 of the project, “Developing and Testing a Uniform Framework for Collecting Race, Ethnicity and Primary Language Data in Hospitals." At project completion  hospitals will be able to assess quality and identify disparities in clinical diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes, which will guide quality improvement activities internally as well as promoting similar efforts by other hospitals and health systems.

Phase 1 outcomes will serve as a foundation for Phase 2, which will focus on developing and implementing clinical interventions to improve the quality of health care for vulnerable populations.

The goals of the overall project are to employ a systems-based approach to:

  • Reduce different treatment of ethnic and racial minorities.
  • Educate communities about their roles in disease management.
  • Educate health care professionals about cultural, linguistic, and other barriers that contribute to variation in care management.
  • Document models that help organizations and communities reduce disparities in health treatment and ultimately health status.
  • Identify common data systems that allow organizations to document change over time in access and outcome.

For more information, contact Romana Hasnain-Wynia, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, rhasnain@aha.org, or Debbie Pierce, Project Coordinator, dpierce@aha.org.