Activating Health Data to Achieve Health Equity: An Event to Drive Strategies and Solutions for Demographic Data

Social and economic inequities have driven health disparities in the U.S. health system for decades, preventing movement on key health metrics. While the outcomes of Healthy People 2020 show improvement on trackable objectives for Black and Hispanic/Latino populations in particular, the U.S. health system continues to see disparities across communities. The COVID-19 pandemic saw Black and Hispanic/Latino individuals at higher risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19, and stigma and discrimination continue to affect access and outcomes for sexual and gender minorities. A recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report calls on stakeholders to create health data systems that are centered around health equity.

Moderated by Josh Prasad of the Health Resources and Services Administration Center for Innovation and Shruti Kothari of Blue Shield of California, this event identifies solutions and strategies that can activate health data to achieve health equity.

Speakers at our featured panel include

• Lynne Chou O’Keefe, Founder and Managing Partner, Define Ventures
• Sandra Hernández, CEO, California Health Care Foundation
• Naomi Senkeeto, Managing Director of Health Equity Policy, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
• Andy Slavitt, General Partner, Town Hall Ventures

This convening brings together key stakeholders with real-world experience creating systems and best practices around data capture, use and sharing. Through this work, we aim to:

• Explain why demographic data collection, use and sharing are important to health equity, and the value this data provides to each speaker organization’s work
• Describe the gaps in data collection, use and sharing, how speakers see these gaps in their work, e.g., lack of data collection, varying standards, lack of government enforcement, lack of robust data sharing
• Provide examples of ways to close gaps, e.g., data collection mandates, health information exchange, government agency analytics