How Advancing Racial Equity Can Create Business Value

This session will explore strategies and internal enabling conditions for hospitals and health systems to advance health equity and simultaneously improve their business performance through an explicit focus on racial equity. Ryan De Souza, Associate Director at FSG, will share insights from the FSG report “Health Care and the Competitive Advantage of Racial Equity: How Advancing Racial Equity Can Create Business Value.” Kate Sommerfeld, President of Social Determinants of Health Institute at ProMedica, a Toledo-based non-profit health care system, will bring the insights to life by sharing ProMedica’s story on how it’s approaching this work. The strategies implemented by ProMedica are rooted in community and multisector partner alignment and help promote racial equity.

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Ryan De Souza

Ryan De Souza is an Associate Director at FSG, a non-profit consulting firm working to promote equitable social change. At FSG, Ryan partners with the nation’s leading corporations and foundations to advance health equity. He is the co-author of “Health Care and the Competitive Advantage of Racial Equity: How Advancing Racial Equity Can Create Business Value”, which was published in April 2019. Prior to joining FSG, Ryan launched and managed a consulting service at the Association of American Medical Colleges and advised hospitals and health systems on how to improve operational and financial performance while at The Advisory Board Company.

Kate Sommerfeld

Kate Sommerfeld is President of the National Social Determinants of Health Institute at ProMedica, a mission-driven, not-for-profit, health care & wellbeing system based in Toledo, Ohio. ProMedica is the 15th largest hospital system in the country, serving communities in 28 states, and is an industry leader in the social determinants of health. Under Kate’s leadership, the Institute is driving clinical integration of SDOH through patient screening, connecting those patients to a variety of interventions like food clinics and community health workers, and launched a $50 million place-based neighborhood revitalization effort that includes a nonprofit grocery store in a former food desert. Most recently, the Institute has launched an Employer Solution for employee screening and interventions. Prior to joining ProMedica, Kate worked for various community-based and nonprofit organizations, including in the United Way system, leading both rural and urban change.