Full Citation
Title: Health Equity Action Plan Toolkit
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2023
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Abstract: The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation (the Foundation) recognizes that structural racism is a public health issue and that access to affordable, quality health care is a racial and social justice issue.In 2021, the Foundation published a primer on health disparities in Massachusetts to serve as a foundational resource to broaden collective understanding of racial and ethnic health inequities and disparities in the Commonwealth. The primer showed that while disparities in health outcomes across racial and ethnic groups are often narrower in the Commonwealth than they are in the nation, clear disparities persist. The Foundation engaged Manatt Health to develop a vision and proposed plan for action—collectively a Health Equity Action Plan—for achieving a racially and ethnically equitable health care delivery system in Massachusetts. To inform the development of the Health Equity Action Plan, Manatt facilitated two focus groups in the spring of 2023 and conducted a state and national landscape scan between February 2023 through April 2023 of over 100 research articles, reports, and organizational policies/practices to identify best practices and examples for operationalizing and achieving such a system. The landscape scan also includes examples identified through stakeholder interviews conducted by Manatt in the summer/fall of 2023 with close to 40 stakeholders representing diverse perspectives on Massachusetts’ health care delivery system and the national health equity landscape.The landscape scan, interviews, and consumer focus groups reinforced our understanding that the health care delivery system alone can only go so far. Long-lasting, systemic change requires action from all of government (across agencies and areas of focus), health care providers, health plans, the social service sectors, philanthropy, and other stakeholders. The focus of this work is on racial and ethnic inequities in the health care delivery system and therefore can be considered a first phase in a larger system-wide effort to eliminate all inequities that affect people’s health.This Health Equity Action Plan Toolkit (Toolkit) includes an illustrative set of interventions, policies, and programs identified through the landscape scan and interviews that providers, health care delivery system leaders, and other implementation stakeholders can deploy to help achieve a racially and ethnically equitable system in Massachusetts.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Torres, Bryant; Lazarus, Elizabeth
Publisher: Massachusetts Foundation
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Health, Population Health and Health Systems, Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity
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