About

Mission

Accelerate Health Equity (AHE) is a citywide initiative aimed at addressing racism and discrimination, and advancing health equity through a unified approach. Our mission is to fight racism within healthcare by supporting and evaluating evidence-based interventions to improve the health of Black Philadelphians and other underserved communities. This initiative builds on a large number of equity directed efforts that have been ongoing in the city and brings together a diverse group of key stakeholders representing health systems, payors, and community organizations to work collaboratively to improve health outcomes.

 

To learn more about Accelerate Health Equity’s launch, click here.

Our Approach

  • Commit to community & stakeholder engagement and partnership regarding goals & priorities.
  • Focus on % change in specific measures over time & evaluate progress toward health equity to support and accelerate scaling of the most effective interventions.
  • Use behavioral economics, human centered design & health services research to conduct rigorous pilots
  • Include mixed methods approaches and community input to track progress over time.
  • Use diverse data sources & local information to inform measurement & reporting.

A Conceptual Model: Factors Affecting Health Inequities

Accelerate Health Equity is guided by a conceptual framework informed by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute County Health Rankings Model, which identifies the intersecting factors impacting life expectancy and quality of life and the overarching impact of racism and discrimination.

Conceptual Model

Focus

Accelerate Health Equity will specifically focus on 16 topic areas that were identified through a rigorous process spearheaded by the Health Care Improvement Foundation and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health resulting in the 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment.

Within these topic areas, Accelerate Health Equity will identify meaningful areas of focus that have 1) relevance and importance for affected communities, 2) the greatest opportunity for fundamentally achieving health equity, 3) measurability and potential to catalyze significant improvement in the health of communities in the near term and over time.

 

 

Explore our health equity dashboard to learn more about these topic areas.

DISSEMINATION STRATEGY

We will develop an implementation playbook to enable scalability of solutions across institutions and communities. The playbook will describe innovations in stakeholder engagement, resource mobilization, optimal workflows, best practices, and detailed protocols.

Steering Committee Organizations

The initial steering committee will include organizations well-positioned to make significant contributions to improving health outcomes in Philadelphia.