Employees want to know that their employers have a vested interest in their health, Vikki Walton, MBA, health equity leader at Mercer, explains.
Employers play an important role in health equity, and Vikki Walton, MBA, health equity leader at Mercer, explained how to improve that through a company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategy in a presentation at the Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health (GPBCH).
Transcription
When you begin working with an employer, what are the key starting points to improving health equity?
We go in and we first have the conversation about education. So, we have to educate them. Again, a lot of times employers recognize that with health equity or social determinants of health, they might know a little bit about it, but not so much. So, we go in and we have to educate staff around exactly what it means. And then we go in and we start to assess their actual benefits. We go in and do a deep dive into what they're offering and then tie it to different groups of cohorts.
So, if we are looking at the LGBTQ+ community, what are they doing around gender-affirming care? If we're looking at women, reproductive health, what are we doing? What are we offering? How can we support that? What does travel and lodging look like for those who want to have care at centers of excellence? So we go in and we do a deep dive, which will take some time, to assess what they currently offer.
We also do data harvesting. What does your data look like? As we start to support your inclusive benefits, what are we seeing with populations? So we go in and look at that. We also look at social determinants of health, where we look at the social vulnerability index to identify are there populations that are experiencing access to care. How can we support that? So, we take a methodical approach to assessing their overarching benefit platform, and then from there, start to look at what those interventions might look like.
Are there any research areas of interest?
Yeah, so the question always comes up of, well, what's the return on investment? How can we identify whether we’re being effective if this is our approach? We have seen research with the AMA [American Medical Association] that has looked at employers’ role and how a healthy employee will support a healthy workforce, and the importance of that. We've had surveys from employees saying,“This is what we want and we’re interested in having employers take a vested interest in our health and specifically targeted groups.”
But we also look at utilization and employee engagement, and then overarching outcomes as we develop. So as far as research, it's kind of individualized depending on what the employer is looking to gain. And then over time, I believe we'll be able to harvest and have robust outcomes data to support when employers start to improve the access and be more strategic and intentional when it comes to certain cohorts.
Health Equity and Access Weekly Roundup: May 4, 2024
May 4th 2024This week, the Center on Health Equity and Access highlights a variety of gaps that exist in health care, spanning women's health, the rising rate of metabolic disease, and policy for LGBTQ+ and immigrant populations. The consensus among featured experts points to comprehensive care models.
Read More
Tackling Health Inequality: The Power of Education and Experience
April 30th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are bringing you a special month-long podcast series with our Strategic Alliance Partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our final episode of this limited series and our conversation with Janine Jelks-Seale, MSPPM, director of health equity at UPMC Health Plan.
Listen
Bimekizumab Shows Promising 52-Week Safety and Efficacy in Psoriatic Arthritis
May 3rd 2024Promising results presented at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy 2024 annual meeting support the safety and efficacy of bimekizumab treatment in patients with active psoriatic arthritis who had previously shown inadequate response or intolerance to tumor necrosis factor inhibitors.
Read More
Examining Low-Value Cancer Care Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
April 25th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the April 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on the rates of low-value cancer care services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen
A new federal rule will enable thousands of immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to obtain health care through the Affordable Care Act; a forthcoming CMS rule is expected to lower home-based care wait times and raise caregiver wages; the HHS Office for Civil Rights has finalized 2 rules that strengthen the ACA’s health care discrimination ban.
Read More