Excerpt

The United States has experienced vast demographic changes, especially in the last generation; new populations have emerged as immigrants disperse across the country and form new communities in different states. Such demographic shifts affect health care in a variety of dramatic ways, particularly in the way health care is delivered. With more diverse cultures and languages, health care providers now must tailor the health care they provide to individuals to ensure that care is equitable and patient-centered. Delivering equitable health care and focusing on the individual has incidentally elevated health care disparities and health literacy as major health care topics. Providers are beginning to use tools to improve care delivery in these areas, such as providing patients with appropriate medication instructions in their primary language and offering translation services—tools that could lead to vast improvements in the care patients receive. Quality improvement, with a focus on reducing health care disparities and enhancing health literacy, is vital to assuring better health for the nation now and for future populations.

Contents

• The National Academies
• Planning Committee for a Workshop on Promoting Health Quality: Quality Improvement in Underserved Populations and Areas
• Forum on the Science of Health Care Quality Improvement and Implementation
• Roundtable on Health Disparities
• Roundtable on Health Literacy
• Reviewers
• 1. Introduction
  • THE WORKSHOP AGENDA
• 2. Opportunity at the Intersection of Quality Improvement, Disparities Reduction, and Health Literacy
  • QUALITY
  • DISPARITIES
  • HEALTH LITERACY
  • THE PERFECT STORM
  • NEXT STEPS
• 3. Building the Foundation for Integrating Health Literacy, Disparities Reduction, and Quality Improvement in Health and Health Care
  • HEALTH LITERACY: A MATTER OF HEALTH CARE QUALITY AND EQUITY
  • INTEGRATING HEALTH LITERACY, DISPARITIES REDUCTION, AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
  • PATIENT-CENTEREDNESS AS AN INDICATOR OF QUALITY
  • REACTION AND DISCUSSION
• 4. Integration at the Practitioner Level
  • PANEL INTRODUCTION
  • HEALTH PLAN LEVEL
  • AMBULATORY CARE LEVEL
  • HOSPITAL LEVEL
  • REACTION PANEL
  • DISCUSSION
• 5. Breakout Groups
  • AMBULATORY CARE
  • HEALTH PLANS
  • HOSPITALS
  • GENERAL DISCUSSION
• 6. Policy Issues of Integration
  • DATA AND MEASUREMENT
  • NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
  • DISCUSSION
• 7. Concluding Remarks
  • COLLABORATION AND CREATIVITY
  • COMMUNICATION
  • DATA, MEASURES, AND STANDARDIZATION
  • DEVELOPING LITERACY THROUGHOUT THE LIFE SPAN
  • AT-RISK POPULATIONS
  • MODELS OF CARE
  • SELF-MANAGEMENT
  • CONCLUSION
• References
• Appendixes
  • A Workshop Agenda
  • B Workshop Participants

Samantha Chao, Karen Anderson, and Lyla Hernandez, Rapporteurs.

This study was supported by Academy for Educational Development (unnumbered award); Affinity Health Plan (unnumbered award); Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (Contracts HHS233200600595P; HHSP233200700506P; HHSP233200800363P); Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Office of Minority Health (Contracts HHSP23320042509XI; TO#11); American Academy of Family Physicians (unnumbered award); California Endowment (Contracts 20052634; 20071781); California HealthCare Foundation (Contract 06-1213); Commonwealth Fund (Contract 20060048); Connecticut Health Foundation (unnumbered grant); Department of Health and Human Services (N01-OD-4-2139, TO#148); Ford Foundation (Contracts 1050-0152,FF5H003); GlaxoSmithKline (G050002912); Healthcare Georgia Foundation (unnumbered grant); The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (Contract 01-1149-810); Kaiser Permanente (Contract 20072164); Merck & Co., Inc. (unnumbered grants); Missouri Foundation for Health (Contracts 06-0022-HPC; unnumbered award); Pfizer Institute (unnumbered award); Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Contracts 56387; 58291); UnitedHealth Group (unnumbered award); the Veterans Health Administration (691-D68159); and W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Contract P0123822).

Suggested citation:

IOM (Institute of Medicine). 2009. Toward Health Equity and Patient-Centeredness: Integrating Health Literacy, Disparities Reduction, and Quality Improvement: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the organizations or agencies that provided support for this project.

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.