AMA Framework to Help Orgs Invest in, Advance Health Equity

The American Medical Association (AMA) is seeking to advance health equity through an initiative that provides participating healthcare organizations with an investment framework that prioritizes the health of underserved and underrepresented communities.

The In Full Health Learning and Action Community to Advance Equitable Health Innovation initiative will help organizations center health equity and prioritize historically marginalized communities when choosing where to invest their resources. The network will urge stakeholders to keep underserved populations in mind when designing, developing, testing, and evaluating new programs.

The initiative consists of five principles that will help organizations achieve health equity.

According to AMA, the network will help organizations understand how structural racism, sexism, and bias impact the allocation of health innovation resources. The initiative will also help stakeholders assess health innovation solutions by how they impact health equity and invest in health innovations from creators who prioritize historically marginalized communities.

In addition, the initiative encourages stakeholders to use health innovation investment models that support asset ownership and wealth development in marginalized communities and engage with healthcare industry influencers to help address barriers and needs in these communities.

“It is crucial that we invest in solutions that are created for, with, and by communities that have traditionally been sidelined from health innovation resources,” Jack Resneck, Jr., MD, president-elect of AMA, said in the press release.

“As a component of the AMA’s broader work to advance racial justice and equity in health care, this new initiative will help us continue to drive the future of digital medicine while ensuring health innovation addresses the needs and improves the health of all patients—particularly those who have been most marginalized.”

The initiative builds upon AMA’s External Equity and Innovation Advisory Group and its strategic plan to embed racial justice and advance health equity.

Although Black and Indigenous people of color, Latinx individuals, and women make up around 70 percent of the US population and hold around 80 percent of purchasing power, these groups are significantly underfunded and underrepresented in healthcare ventures, the press release noted.

This exclusion exacerbates health inequities within these communities and can create barriers to achieving positive health outcomes, AMA said.

“By connecting this community of stakeholders around a shared goal of driving equitable resources to health solutions for those historically excluded in the design and profit of innovation, such as Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people, people with disabilities, and those who identify as LBGTQ+, In Full Health provides the collective power and capability to bring about change,” Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH, chief health equity officer and senior vice president of AMA, stated in the press release.

Through the initiative’s website, InFullHealth.org, participating organizations can connect with other stakeholders and experts to share content, tools, and opportunities that will help advance equitable health innovation.

AMA has launched the initiative with a handful of organizations that have signed on as founding collaborators, including the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), HIMSS, and NODE Health.

The health innovation initiative joins a growing line of resources that AMA has released to help advance health equity across the industry.

The organization recently developed a health equity toolkit that emphasized the importance of group education and training programs, patient data collection, and quality improvement initiatives to advance health equity.

AMA’s recent initiative focuses on the financial aspect of investing in health equity, a route that may become more common as the year advances. A recent survey from BDO revealed that healthcare chief financial officers planned to invest in strategies to improve health equity in 2022.