Developing health equity strategies rooted in data and insights
As part of our ongoing discussion series, Under the Same Sky, Abner Mason, founder and CEO of SameSky Health, met with Dr. J. Nwando Olayiwola (MD, MPH, FAAFP), the inaugural chief health equity officer and senior vice president of Humana. The conversation was focused on Dr. Olayiwola’s priorities, experiences, and key initiatives to advance health equity. She discussed the importance of developing health equity strategies rooted in data and insights and also emphasized the need for cross-functional collaboration to address health disparities and barriers to care. View the recording.
“In a nation that is as rich, big, wealthy, forward thinking, and innovative as ours…life expectancy or life experiences shouldn’t be based on where parents or grandparents have the ability or opportunity or privilege to live.””
Taking on the role as the first chief health equity officer at Humana was daunting because it was a role with no real roadmap or job description. Dr. Olayiwola knew she needed to develop a clear and thoughtful health equity strategy in order to address the problems they were trying to solve, and she and her team at Humana were able to focus on three strategic priorities:
Access to care: Ensure that all members have access to high-quality and efficient healthcare services, addressing barriers such as literacy, geography, and costs.
Quality of care: Improve the quality of care and reduce disparities in quality among all demographic groups. They aim to provide culturally competent and sensitive care, leveraging value-based care approaches.
Address non-medical barriers: Social determinants of health, such as social needs, significantly impact health outcomes. They aim to reduce disparities in these barriers, particularly for underserved communities.
With no current industry standard to measure health equity performance, especially at the plan level, Dr. Olayiwola is most proud of her team’s efforts to make the health equity discussion one that is similar to quality discussions. Her team has created a composite measure for health equity, allowing them to evaluate and track their performance in addressing health disparities over time. This measure helps define what good performance in health equity looks like and encourages accountability.
Dr. Olayiwola also stressed the importance of defining the business value of focusing on health equity. She emphasized to not make health equity overwhelming for people, but instead make it actionable and relatable, defining performance and success, and how to measure it. It is not just the responsibility of a select few, and if measurements aren’t created around health equity, it will not remain a priority. Health equity will only work through a combination of passion and performance.
“We have got to figure out a way to quantify and measure [health equity] to make sure that we are making progress, but also to get continual support for this work.” ”
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