Resource Library

2020 Board of Directors

Thanks to a health equity grant delivered through a collaboration between the American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL), Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago extended free diabetes education services to uninsured and underinsured patients through its accredited, self-management diabetes education program offered by its Diabetes Community Center (DCC).

Breaking the ice can be complicated! How can hospitals and health systems create trusting environments that make interactions between patients and health care providers more comfortable and inclusive? Join Keith Stinson, RN and emergency department nursing director at Chatham Hospital, serving a mostly rural area of North Carolina, and Kimberlydawn Wisdom, MD, senior VP and chief wellness & diversity officer at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, as they describe their innovative staff training methods addressing the dynamics of unconscious biases, how to avoid uncomfortable interactions, and successful strategies for heightening bias awareness in the workplace. Both hospitals, operating in completely different clinical settings, are 2020 AHA Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award honorees.

In this Advancing Health podcast about Cone Health and how it has pioneered educational sessions for its physicians about social and racial influences in health care, Darren Henson, Director of Operations with the AHA’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity, speaks with three members of Cone Health’s leadership team: Laura Vail, Director of Health Equity, Dr. Alvin Powell, Chief Health Equity Officer and Paul Jeffrey, President of Cone Health’s Wesley Long Hospital. Cone Health, winner of the AHA’s 2020 Equity of Care Award, has been recognized for its innovative process and creative steps that hospitals and health systems can incorporate to achieve similar success in advancing health equity.

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.

Three hospitals and health systems are recognized for earning 2020 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Awards.

By focusing on improving health equity, hospitals can provide tremendous value to patients and the overall health care delivery system. Strategies for eliminating health care disparities, along with additional guidelines and best practices, are highlighted in this new resource that’s designed to help health care organizations refresh their commitment to advance health equity in their communities. It’s also a useful guide for initiating new steps toward eliminating health inequities for all individuals.

Right before the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, AHA’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) convened more than 65 leaders, trustees and clinicians from rural hospitals across the country at AHA’s annual Rural Conference. We inquired about strategies for health equity in rural communities, as well as these communities’ most common areas of disparity or need.

In this continued discussion, Elisa Arespacochaga, vice president of the AHA’s Physician Alliance and interim executive lead for the AHA’s Institute for Diversity an Health Equity, talks with Juana Slade and Anton Gunn about their efforts to learn more about the patients they are serving through REAL data collection, stratification and utilization.

Inequities in health care are widely noted, yielding poorer quality of care and reduced patient safety, and increased costs. The economic burden of racial health inequalities in the United States is estimated to be $230 billion dollars. Identifying disparities in health care and effectively intervening to mitigate the effect of these gaps is key to attainting a society of healthy communities, where all individuals reach their highest potential for health. Hospital and health systems may utilize a dashboard to provide health care leaders with the necessary information on their journey to advance health equity, diversity and inclusion. A basic level health equity, diversity and inclusion dashboard may include measures to model the American Hospital Association 123forEquity Pledge to include the following: race, ethnicity and language preference data collection, stratification and use, cultural competency training, diversity and inclusion in governance and leadership, and community partnerships.

Diversity, inclusion and cultural competence training are imperative for health care organizations, as the U.S. demographic landscape continues to change. The need to understand these changes and develop sustainable business strategies for success requires leadership to manage the intersection between diversity and health care business strategy. For health care organizations, accomplishing this goal will positively impact patient experience, employee engagement, leadership development, service excellence, as well as safety and quality. Diversity & inclusion, along with community engagement, serve as support pillars for our critical focus on overall health equity. A health care organization with a robust diversity strategy can improve the overall health of their local community by helping to eliminate health disparities and reduce the cost of care.

Ensuring that essential, high-quality health care services are available in all communities should not be impacted by socioeconomic conditions, background or merely by your ZIP code. We believe hospitals and health systems have a great opportunity to improve the health of individuals and partner with the communities they serve.

In this Spotlight Feature interview, Jean Ricci Goodman, M.D., and Aparna Sharma, M.D., discuss the program’s development and how it’s designed to improve maternal and child health in Loyola’s surrounding communities.

IFDHE has gathered a list of resources about the Health Equity Grant focus areas.

Kimberlydawn Wisdom, M.D., M.S., IFDHE Board Chairperson, Senior Vice President, Community Health & Equity and Chief Wellness & Diversity Officer,Henry Ford Health System, Detroit answers questions regarding innovative solutions for delivering mental and behavioral health care services

A list of organizations receiving grants and resources on REaL data, SOGI data, Social Determinants of Health, cultural competency, and partnerships.

News coverage on health disparity and initiatives to improve health equity in the U.S.

The American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL) are committed to eliminating health care disparities by ensuring individuals in every community receive high-quality, equitable and safe care. As a part of this commitment, IFDHE and BCBSIL are co-sponsoring a grant to extend financial support for one year to 13 AHA member hospitals that are part of the BCBSIL provider networks.

The American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity has developed new REaL data resources and tools to help health care providers address health care disparities in the fight against COVID-19 and beyond.

Safe, equitable and high quality health care for all is the common goal of an innovative partnership between the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL). To spread this initiative to support underserved communities throughout Illinois, a new partnership grant program was launched in 2020 to help hospitals and health systems expand services related to maternal and child health, pediatric asthma, adult diabetes, breast cancer and geographic disparities, including access to care in rural communities.