How consultants help healthcare organizations advance health equity: concepts and evidence, data and measurement, social drivers of health, community engagement, equitable access and care delivery, workforce and culture, language and accessibility, policy and payment levers, program design and evaluation, and building a consulting practice. Eighteen lessons.
Modules
Foundations of Health Equity
Lessons
Data and Measurement
Lessons
Access and Care Delivery
Lessons
Community and Workforce
Lessons
Policy Payment and Programs
Lessons
Evaluation Leadership and Practice
Lessons
Other Lessons
Module 4 Review
Module review: key terms, activity and quiz.
Lesson 1.1: Health Disparities, Health Equity, and Social Determinants of Health
A health disparity is a measurable difference in health outcomes, access, or quality of care between population groups, such as a higher rate of uncontrolled diabetes among one racial group compared to another within the
Lesson 5.1: Conducting a Health Equity Data and Program Assessment
A health equity engagement typically opens with an assessment covering three linked areas: data quality and completeness (how reliable is the organization’s REAL and SDOH data, and can it actually support meaningful stra
Lesson 1.2: Why Health Equity Became a Regulatory and Quality Priority
Health equity moved from a voluntary community benefit activity to a formal regulatory and payment priority through several converging forces over the past decade: growing evidence linking unaddressed social needs to avo
Lesson 5.2: Designing the Equity Action Plan
An effective health equity action plan, whether built to satisfy TJC’s NPSG requirement or as a broader strategic document, should specify the designated leadership structure and reporting lines for equity work, the spec
Lesson 1.3: The Equity Landscape Across Provider Types
Hospitals and health systems face the broadest set of health equity obligations, since they are subject to TJC or DNV accreditation standards (where applicable), CMS Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting requirements that
Lesson 5.3: Implementation Support and Sustaining the Program
Implementation support typically involves helping the client build or refine the specific workflows identified in the action plan, such as the SDOH screening and referral process covered in Module 2, staff training on cu
Module 1 Review
Module review: key terms, activity and quiz.
Module 5 Review
Module review: key terms, activity and quiz.
Lesson 2.1: Choosing and Implementing a Screening Tool
Several validated SDOH screening tools are in common use, and a consultant should be able to compare them rather than defaulting to a single option: the CMS Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Health-Related Social Need
Lesson 6.1: Privacy, Data Sensitivity, and Avoiding Harm
Demographic and SDOH data are especially sensitive categories of information, and a consultant must understand that collecting and stratifying this data carries real risk if handled carelessly: race, ethnicity, language,
Lesson 2.2: ICD-10 Z Codes and Documentation
ICD-10-CM includes a specific set of Z codes (Z55 through Z65) covering social determinants of health, referred to broadly as Z codes for social circumstances, including categories for problems related to education and l
Lesson 6.2: Avoiding Performative Programs
A performative health equity program is one that produces the visible artifacts (a mission statement, a training completion certificate, a glossy community report) without the underlying substance of actually measuring d
Lesson 2.3: Closed-Loop Referral and Community Partnerships
Screening without a working referral pathway creates a real ethical and practical problem: identifying that a patient is food insecure or facing eviction and then doing nothing further can feel worse to the patient than
Lesson 6.3: Structuring and Growing a Health Equity Consulting Practice
Health equity consulting naturally organizes into service lines that mirror this course’s structure: data and program assessment (the gap analysis covered in Module 5), SDOH screening and referral workflow design, CLAS S
Module 2 Review
Module review: key terms, activity and quiz.
Module 6 Review
Module review: key terms, activity and quiz.
Lesson 3.1: The Structure of the National CLAS Standards
The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care, commonly called the National CLAS Standards, were developed and are maintained by the HHS Office of Minority Health
Lesson 3.2: Language Access and Communication Standards
The Communication and Language Assistance theme of CLAS, and the related federal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, require organizations to offer language as
Lesson 3.3: Engagement, Continuous Improvement, and Accountability
The third CLAS theme, Engagement, Continuous Improvement, and Accountability, calls for organizations to conduct ongoing organizational self-assessments of CLAS-related activities, collect and maintain accurate demograph
Module 3 Review
Module review: key terms, activity and quiz.
Lesson 4.1: The Joint Commission’s Health Equity Standards
The Joint Commission introduced a National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) specifically focused on health equity, which requires TJC-accredited hospitals to designate an individual or group of individuals to lead activities t
Lesson 4.2: The CMS Framework for Health Equity
CMS published a formal Framework for Health Equity establishing agency-wide priorities that guide how health equity is embedded across CMS programs, generally organized around themes such as expanding the collection, rep
Lesson 4.3: NCQA Health Equity Accreditation and Measurement
NCQA offers a Health Equity Accreditation program, distinct from its broader health plan accreditation, that organizations (including health plans, health systems, and other entities) can pursue specifically to demonstra