Promoting health equity  - Transcript

Romana Hasnain-Wynia, PhD
Director, Center for Healthcare Equity / Institute for Healthcare Studies
Northwestern University - Chicago

The problems that we’re addressing within the Center for Healthcare Equity are the inequities in health care that are very prevalent across the U.S. health care system.

We know from a great deal of evidence that racial, ethnic, linguistic minorities and people with lower socioeconomic status do not fair well in our health care system, in terms of the care that they receive, and, in terms of their health outcomes including higher mortality rates.

Our goal is to understand what’s driving the disparities that we see in health care, and then develop targeted interventions to address them and improve the quality of care for everyone. Aetna, has a history of taking the lead as a health plan in addressing racial and ethnic disparities in health care. They were one of the first plans in the country to systematically collect race and ethnicity data of its members in order to monitor the care that they were receiving.

We’re very excited about the collaboration with the Aetna Foundation and Aetna. The funding is really key to producing results that are actionable at the practice level and at the policy level, where we can truly make change in terms of patient care. We’re also very excited to be able to work with Aetna in disseminating our findings and really use Aetna’s national platform to do that.

Working with Aetna and the Aetna Foundation has been a very positive experience. We’re excited to collectively work together to really have a large impact in improving care for diverse populations.

Aetna Foundation 2009 Annual Giving Report - Promoting health, creating change

Inequities persist in the health and health care of various racial and ethnic minorities in America. For example, African American infants in the United States are 2.4 times more likely to die in their first year of life than are white infants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Office of Minority Health. Also, Hispanics in the United States are almost twice as likely to die from diabetes as non-Hispanic whites, the CDC says.

To understand root causes of these and other health inequities, Aetna awarded a $298,847 grant to the Center for Healthcare Equity at the Institute for Healthcare Studies at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

The grant supports three projects, including: research into health literacy’s role in reducing disparities in chronic disease management; a study of the role health information technology systems might play in reducing health care disparities; and a collaboration with the Chicago Department of Public Health to document the health status of Chicago residents in 77 neighborhoods and the health care resources available to them.

The lessons from these projects will provide models and helpful data to communities nationwide as they strive to improve health care access and quality of care for all.