Dr Joneigh Khaldun: CVS Health's Community Equity Alliance Aims to Improve Health Care for Underserved Populations

The Community Equity Alliance will partner with academic institutions and community-level organizations to identify and address health care disparities in underserved communities, said Joneigh Khaldun, MD, MPH, FACEP, vice president and chief health equity officer for CVS Health.

Transcript

Can you speak on CVS Health’s newly launched Community Equity Alliance and how it will work with academic and health care institutions in identifying and addressing community-level health disparities?

I'm really excited about our recent launch of the CVS Health Community Equity Alliance. Through this alliance, we're bringing together health care and academic institutions across the country to really strengthen access to community health workers and to health care in underserved communities. So, the alliance is not only expanding access, but it's particularly focused on addressing heart health and mental health disparities, which are our core aspects of our health equity strategy.

So, it's important through this alliance we’re really partnering with organizations that are important pillars and providers of services in underserved communities. Really focusing on strengthening those health care and community relationships, but also elevating and integrating the local voices—those people who are on the ground—integrating that into health care so that we can address disparities.

It's important to know that for this alliance, each relationship and each partner—what they're doing in the community—is slightly different. And that's because every community is different, their strengths are slightly different, and what they need is slightly different.