Roadmap to Improve Data to Measure, Monitor and Achieve Health Equity

The project team at Grantmakers In Health will work with a subcontractor, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, to develop a roadmap for improving the consistency and accuracy of data used to measure, monitor, and improve health equity. The project will focus on race and ethnicity data in federal health programs. However, these methods will be useful for addressing equity data for sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, and social drivers of health. The work will have three phases: 1) Develop and populate health equity data framework. The framework will be used to characterize the consistency and accuracy of race and ethnicity data used in measuring and monitoring health equity. It will be populated with federal health care and public health care programs that measure and monitor health care quality and will identify barriers and challenges at each step. 2) Draft health equity data roadmap. The team will conduct key informant interviews to assess whether the identified barriers and proposed solutions resonate with providers and patients and health IT experts. Building on the work in phase one, they will develop short-, medium-, and long-term strategies to address these challenges, that the team will draft into a short roadmap report of immediate action items for the federal government. 3) Review findings with expert advisory panel. The team will host a convening with representatives from policy, public health, health IT, clinical practice, health system, commercial payer, and patient advocacy groups. The group will respond collaboratively and build on the framework and draft recommendations. This work will be developed into a report that will include the framework and a roadmap of long-term strategies to improve data collection at the federal, state, and local levels.