Advancing health equity and trust in health care

Organizations that directly face health equity as an explicit goal are on the critical path toward demonstrating trustworthiness to the communities they serve, but only a few have made the commitment.

This conversation explores a roadmap that health care organizations should take to build trust and improve equity in health care. Speakers share examples of specific, measurable actions and policies that organizations are currently undertaking to dismantle bias and discrimination in health care and provide guidance for undertaking this work at your institution.

Sachin (pronounced SUCH-in) H. Jain, MD, MBA, is CEO of SCAN Group and SCAN Health Plan, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit Medicare Advantage plans, which serves more than 285,000 members across California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas. From 2015-2020, Dr. Jain was President and CEO of CareMore Health and Aspire Health, innovative care delivery systems with more than $1.6B in revenues, which serve 200,000 Medicare and Medicaid patients in 32 states. He also served as Chief Medical Information & Innovation Officer at Merck & Co. and was Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Jain was the first Acting Deputy Director for policy and programs at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Dr. Jain graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a BA in government and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School and MBA from Harvard Business School. Dr. Jain is Adjunct Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. A widely read Forbes columnist, he has been recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the “100 Most Influential People in US Healthcare.” LinkedIn named him its top voice for healthcare industry-related content.

Ronald Wyatt, MD, is an internationally known patient safety expert and health equity expert, and the founder and CEO of Acieving Equity LLC. Previously, Dr. Wyatt was a Vice President and Patient Safety Officer with MCIC Vermont, a major medical malpractice company. He was born in Selma, Alabama and grew up in nearby Perry County (Heiberger) Alabama. As a child, his family relied on public health clinics for practitioner in Greensboro, Alabama whose office was segregated by race. Black people were walk-in only. Prior to joining MCIC Vermont, Dr. Wyatt was Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer at Cook County Health in Chicago and the first Patient Safety Officer at the Joint Commission. He co-chairs the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Equity Advisory Group and is faculty for the IHI Pursuing Equity Initiative. Dr. Wyatt holds an honorary Doctor of Medical Sciences from the Morehouse School of Medicine and is a graduate of the University of Alabama Birmingham School of Medicine. He was chief resident in Internal Medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine, where he was the first Black American Chief resident in the history of the Saint Louis University System.