Health equity: Predictions for 2023
At SameSky Health, we believe that we’re kicking-off a transformative year when health equity talk turns to action. So, what’s in store for 2023?
To find out, we reached out to more than a dozen influential health equity leaders to get their thoughts on the year ahead. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be highlighting each prediction in this blog post, sharing the spotlight with a wide range of healthcare leaders to hear what they had to say.
To start-off these insights, we begin with our own Founder and CEO, Abner Mason.
Abner Mason, Founder and CEO • SameSky Health
“As states and health plans leverage text messaging to engage members who are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage following the public health emergency, the value of meeting people where they are will become clear. Texting = health equity.
“Incentivized by new quality measures, health plans will also gather more data on race, ethnicity, and language, sexual orientation and gender identity, and social determinants of health. These efforts will help boost cultural understanding, personalizing member experiences and closing gaps in care.
“When federal and state regulators and healthcare leaders see the benefits, it will be impossible to return to how things were. But it’s up to each of us whether we make 2023 a turning point in our country’s health equity journey.”
Geeta Nayyar, Chief Medical Officer • Salesforce
“Health equity will remain more of an ideal than a reality in 2023. With a divided Congress, the private sector will need to take the lead, and we’ll have our hands full.
“Misinformation, bias in AI, and barriers to access are all problems that we can address. But just how much progress we’ll make will depend on diverse leadership and innovative action.”
Phil Harker, Chief Growth Officer • SameSky Health
“Health plans will be challenged to collect the required direct member data to stratify quality measures by race and ethnicity to meet NCQA requirements. Plans will look for creative and innovative means to collect self-reported member data to meet this need.”
Pooja Mittal, VP and Chief Equity Officer • Health Net
“Telehealth/virtual care changed the game during the pandemic, but to continue to push for better outcomes, hybrid care will be the next iteration. To maximize access to and relationship-building with providers, as well as to minimize disruption to people’s lives, hybrid care is key.”
Bryan O. Buckley, DrPH, MPH, Director, Health Equity Initiatives • NCQA
“We will see more collective efforts among different stakeholders (e.g., public health, healthcare, education, etc.) that don’t normally work with each other to address health equity because everyone will realize that the only way to make a more just and equitable world is through cross-sector partnerships.”
Dr. J. Nwando Olayiwola, Chief Health Equity Office, Senior Vice President • Humana
“I predict that health equity leaders will be asked to make tighter connections to the business case for health equity and be asked to leverage data in ways that are both actionable and impactable.”
Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, Founder and CEO • Grapevine Health
“We will continue to see more people and companies embrace the idea of health equity, but the emphasis will largely remain on data collection rather than specific actions to the address structural causes of lopsided health outcomes, like prioritizing and paying for upstream services and support, and prevention and reimbursement parity for subspecialty care.”
Liana Douillet Guzmán, CEO • FOLX Health
“Employers will need to continue to incorporate services into their benefits ecosystem to ensure their employees aren’t facing barriers such as out-of-pocket fees. That’s why I predict the onus will shift to employers — they will need to pick-up the burden and offer a broad spectrum of healthcare offerings to their employees in order to truly offer equitable healthcare.”
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Health Economist, Advisor, Trend Weaver • THINK-Health, Health Populi
“In 2023, health equity ‘projects’ will be baked into health/care stakeholder organizations’ business strategies across the ecosystem. However, these programs will largely be fragmented and siloed without the public sector embedding ‘health’ into policies such as food and nutrition insecurity, transportation and infrastructure, housing, fair wages and job retraining, and education.”
Juan Fernando Lopera, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer • Beth Israel Lahey Health
“Looking forward to 2023, health equity will be an increasing area of investment for healthcare delivery systems, particularly as payers, public and private, as well as accrediting bodies, such as The Joint Commission, incorporate health equity measurement and accountability into value-based arrangements and accreditation requirements.”
Kevin Dedner, Founder and CEO, Hurdle
“Health equity will take center stage in healthcare. Healthcare leaders, employers, and payers will move toward finding tangible ways to address health disparities. We will be moving beyond conversation and educating, to action-oriented steps and investments.”
Dan Brillman, Co-founder and CEO, Unite Us
“2023 will be the year we see health equity move from a top priority inside organizations into cross-sector and collaborative action that decreases inequities. That action will be less about individual organizations addressing health equity alone, but about how communities as a whole — healthcare, government, corporate, and social care come together — assess, serve, and analyze our impact and investments as a new, connected delivery system.”
