Work Groups are chartered by Roundtables to go deep on a key issue over a three-year period, and to make recommendations to Roundtable Fellows for pronouncements or actions that should be taken by the Roundtable, the Forum or by all CEOs. Work Groups are focused on:

• Developing specific mechanisms that advance access to high-quality, affordable health care for all people
• Identifying best practices and developing strategies for wide dissemination so observable results can be realized within 3 years
• Addressing issues that CEOs and boards of payer, provider and life science companies would consider top priorities
• Driving changes where the voice of payer, provider and life science CEOs and their actions matter, where private sector leaders can make progress without regulatory change and which do not require endorsement of specific products or solutions

Chartered Work Groups

Leveraging Data to Improve Health Equity

Disparities in care exist throughout the healthcare system, but many payer, provider and life science organizations have not segmented their own health outcomes data by race and socioeconomic class so as to analyze the specific situations in which those disparities are occurring among their patients or members. Until they do so, they will not be able to understand the breadth and depth of the disparities or to develop strategies to address those disparities at the patient or population level. The goal of this Work Group is to enable payer, provider and life science CEOs to identify, track and manage the impact of race on prevention and clinical care.

Building Scalable Models and Community Partnerships to Address Social Determinants of Health

Social determinants of health—including food, housing, and transportation—have a significant impact on health outcomes, particularly for vulnerable populations. With recent Medicare Advantage payment for some social determinants, many payer, provider and life science organizations are expanding their focus on social determinants interventions. However, these organizations have struggled to identify specific, evidence-based actions they can take internally and have largely not sought to form meaningful partnerships with community organizations that can deliver results that reduce the total cost of care and improve outcomes. Furthermore, a lack of proper infrastructure and incentive structures often impedes health care organizations from taking meaningful action. The goal of this Work Group is to identify specific scalable, replicable, and efficient best practices for payer, provider and life science CEOs to implement to address social determinants of health in collaboration with community organizations in order to meaningfully drive down the total cost of care and improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations.

Increasing Diversity and Reducing Implicit Bias in Health Care Organizations

While nearly every company in health care celebrates and emphasizes diversity, payer, provider and life science company leadership, including executive teams and boards, rarely reflect their gender, racial or other characteristics of their employees and members or patients. Furthermore, implicit bias among healthcare company employees leads to incorrect assumptions and suboptimal health outcomes. Increasing diversity and reducing unconscious bias in the healthcare community can lead to improved health outcomes for all populations and reduce race-related health disparities. The goal of this Work Group is to reduce racism and bias within the healthcare community through greater leadership diversity and effective unconscious bias training.

Increasing Vaccine Uptake in Diverse Communities: A Working Guide for Health Care CEOs. Although data around vaccine distribution in America is sorely limited and scattered, one pattern is becoming increasingly clear – those who have been affected by COVID-19 the most are getting vaccinated the least. The working guide outlines 10 emerging best practices for creating an action plan that increases confidence and accessibility to the vaccine among the diverse communities you serve. Download the guide now.

This guide has been developed with significant input from Fellows of the Roundtable on Community Health and Advancing Health Equity.