Reducing Health and Health Care Disparities: Implementation Lessons and Best Practices for Health Care Organizations

While many health care organizations are motivated to identify and reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the health and health care of their patients, most lack the tools and resources to do so effectively. To identify ways to address disparities more effectively, Aligning Forces for Quality, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, partnered with Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change and the Center for Health Care Strategies to work with nine outpatient practices and their communities. This paper shares the lessons learned from these nine organizations in implementing innovative programming to address disparities in their patient populations. It includes concrete recommendations that other health care organizations can use to improve the quality of their health care delivery systems and implement interventions to address inequities in patient care and outcomes.