Washington, DC—The National Quality Forum (NQF) has launched a
comprehensive, multi-year program to reduce health disparities and advance the delivery
of high-quality healthcare for all Americans. Disparities are differences caused
by inequities linked to social, economic, and/or environmental disadvantages. NQF’s
goal is to improve health equity and healthcare quality, particularly for communities, populations, and
socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups where health disparities persist.
“Pointing NQF’s extensive expertise in quality measurement
and improvement squarely at achieving health equity is simply the right thing
to do,” said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil, NQF’s president and CEO. “To
effectively address disparities and improve care, we need to understand and
address the social factors affecting people every day because most of what
really affects health and health outcomes happens where we live and work, not
at a visit to the doctor.”
NQF’s
new Health Equity Program (PDF) includes a
planned portfolio of cross-cutting projects that build upon NQF’s substantive
work in health equity, including the recently released NQF
Roadmap to Promote Health Equity and Eliminate Disparities (PDF) and NQF’s
groundbreaking two-year
trial to risk adjust certain healthcare performance measures for social
risk factors to understand how these factors can influence health and health
outcomes.
Leveraging NQF’s ability to bring all stakeholders to the table to
address pressing healthcare needs, as well as a decade of NQF thought
leadership to promote health equity and quality improvement, NQF’s health
equity program will focus on four key areas:
- Identifying
disparities and those affected by health inequity, by promoting a common understanding and
standardized language around health inequity, and gathering innovative
strategies for social risk factor data collection
- Influencing
performance measurement, by
facilitating the development of needed measures to promote health equity and
reduce disparities
- Inspiring
implementation of best practices and innovative approaches by disseminating best practices and
innovative interventions as well as lessons learned, and by creating practical,
applied guidance
- Informing
payment by convening thought leaders and
experts to explore the impact of payment on health equity, as well as emerging
issues related to risk adjusting performance measures for social risk factors
such as income, education, and health literacy.
NQF will engage its more than 430 member
organizations in its new Health Equity Program, and is seeking external funding
from various sources for components of the initiative, parts of which are
already underway. For example, the Aetna Foundation has awarded NQF a grant to better
understand how to address the impact of food insecurity on health and health
outcomes. The Foundation previously supported the development of a strategy to address the impact of social determinants of
health on care quality and outcomes.
“Right now, we have too few standards in place to
understand the impact of social factors on people’s healthcare and overall
wellbeing,” said Garth Graham, MD, MPH, president of the Aetna Foundation. “We
need to take action to ensure that people live their healthiest lives possible,
and our work with NQF is key to achieving that goal.”
In addition, NQF is continuing its initiative to
better understand the impact of risk adjusting performance measures for social
factors with a new, three-year commitment focused on unanswered questions about
social risk adjustment of measures, including determining what data are needed
and how to access them.
To learn more or get involved, please contact NQF
at info@qualityforum.org.
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The
National Quality Forum leads national collaboration to improve health and
healthcare quality through measurement. Learn more at www.qualityforum.org.
