Focusing on Health Equity in AHRQ's PCORTF Investments
Applying a Health Equity Lens
Health equity is essential to all areas of the framework. The magnifying glass signifies AHRQ’s commitment to using an equity lens through which to design and drive the implementation of the goals, desired outcomes, and cross-cutting strategies. An equity lens provides a deliberate focus on understanding and addressing factors at multiple levels of influence (policies, systems, and environmental factors; institutional and organizational factors; community-level factors; and individual factors) that can advance fair and just opportunities to attain the highest level of patient health outcomes and well-being for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation socioeconomic status, geography, language preference, or other socio-demographic characteristics. Additionally, a health equity lens also highlights the importance of prioritizing patient-centered and participatory methods that center equity and ensure the voices of stakeholder and community members from underserved and priority populations are reflected in all stages of the research process.
Key Domains To Advance Health Equity
AHRQ has identified five key domains or levers for action to advance health equity (listed below in bold). The Agency pursues answers to these broad, critical questions through its PCORTF mechanisms and other partnerships to pursue our mission of ensuring equitable patient-centered care for all patients.
- Healthcare delivery system infrastructure: How can healthcare delivery organizations structure their systems of care to advance health equity?
- Payment: How can payers and healthcare delivery organizations use payment to support and incentivize advancing healthcare equity?
- Social determinants of health and social needs: How can healthcare delivery organizations address individual patient social needs and broader structural social determinants of health (SDOH) to advance health equity?
- Implementation: How can healthcare delivery organizations most effectively implement interventions to advance health equity?
- Access: How can healthcare delivery organizations and payers improve access to high- quality care to advance health equity?
By using its core competencies to support progress in these key areas, AHRQ aims to support health systems to deliver equitable care and ultimately, to achieve the outcome of reducing disparities in care access, quality, safety, affordability, and value. In the PCORTF strategic framework, specific health equity targets include reduced health disparities for AHRQ’s priority populations; engagement of underrepresented communities in training, implementation, and clinical decision support initiatives; and improved access to needed evidence-based care for vulnerable populations.
See examples of AHRQ’s prior work to reduce and document disparities in healthcare and increase health equity. AHRQ will continue to build and expand upon this body of work using its PCORTF strategic framework as a guide.
