The Program for Healthcare Equity is dedicated to eliminating disparities in health care and improving the quality of care for all individuals. Our goal is for every person to get the highest quality of health care possible, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, cultural beliefs, language socioeconomic status or health literacy.The Program for Healthcare Equity has outstanding multidisciplinary research programs and educational initiatives that include affiliated faculty in the Program in Communication and Medicine, the Department of General Internal Medicine, the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Department of Preventive Medicine, the Office of Medical Education, and other faculty from across the Feinberg School of Medicine. We work with our national and local partnerships including researchers, health care leaders, clinicians, and policymakers from organizations such as the American Medical Association, the National Health Law Program, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the Joint Commission, the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services, the Chicago Department of Public Health, and many additional community clinics. Patients are our partners, and they provide invaluable insights into the challenges they face and suggestions about designing interventions. Together, we conduct studies that examine the root causes of disparities, evaluate innovative solutions, and translate our findings to practice to achieve our goal of equity in health care.
News & EventsPay-for-Performance Programs to Reduce Racial/Ethnic Disparities: Limitations of a One-Size-Fits-All Approach In an HCFO-funded study, Joel S. Weissman, Ph.D., of the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Lisa Iezzoni, M.D., and Christine Vogeli, Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Policy; Romana Hasnain-Wynia and Raymond Kang of Northwestern University; Robin Weinick of RAND; and MaryBeth Landrum of Harvard Medical School examined the quality of hospital care, estimated the proportion of patients receiving recommended care, created new measures of patient care quality, and simulated the impact of several P4P scoring methods on hospital rankings. The study team determined that standard P4P programs based on ranking providers by overall quality of care may not be the most effective way to target disparities. Read the full article here. Julie Yonek presented research regarding closing the racial gap in Chicago breast cancer mortality rates from the report "A Profile of Health and Health Resources within Chicago's 77 Community Areas," this week at a Feinberg luncheon seminar, "State of the Cancer Union: Minority Report." To view the Medill article, please click here. Romana Hasnain-Wynia recently served as the guest editor for the Health Affairs Disparities Special Issue: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/10.toc. Within the special issue is a paper written by Robin Weinick and Romana Hasnain-Wynia, entitled “ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY: Quality Improvement Efforts Under Health Reform: How To Ensure That They Help Reduce Disparities—Not Increase Them.” Julie Yonek, Research Associate in the Program for Healthcare Equity/Center for Healthcare Studies, participated as an expert panelist for the State Advisory Committees to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the issue of health disparities in Chicago. Based on the information the panelists provided, the report, Health Facilities in Illinois and Patient Access to Quality Language Interpreters was published. Julie is quoted throughout the report, which can be viewed at the following link: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ILSAC_TitleVI[1].pdf. Both WTTW's Chicago Tonight and the Chicago Sun-Times recently highlighted the report "A Profile of Health and Health Resources within Chicago’s 77 Communities." This study, conducted by Juliet Yonek, MPH and Romana Hasnain-Wynia, PhD examines the disparities of health resources throughout Chicago, and concludes that South and Southwest sides have the poorest health and resources in the city, especially in terms of childhood obesity, breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy and motor vehicle injury and death. “We need to be thinking about how we are allocating our limited health care resources. I think if we hit the areas where there’s greatest need, where we know we can have a big impact, we can begin to see improvements over time in the health status of Chicago’s citizens and hopefully reduce the disparities that we know are very pervasive along the way," said Dr. Hasnain-Wynia, Director of the Center for Health Equity. Research ProjectsAligning Forces for Quality - Evaluation Collecting Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data to Identify and Reduce Health Disparities: Perceptions of Health Plan Enrollees: PubMed ID 20889576 Profile of the Health and Healthcare of the People of Chicago - coming in June! Variations in Quality of Care and Efficiency: An Examination of Safety Net Hospitals in the U.S. : PubMed ID 19398722 more> ReportsYonek, J., Hasnain-Wynia, R. A Profile of Health and Health Resources within Chicago’s 77 Communities. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Center for Healthcare Equity/Center for Healthcare Studies, 2011
Click here to read the report. Hasnain-Wynia, R., Pierce, D. and Pittman, M. “Who, When and How: The Current State of Race, Ethnicity, and Primary Language Data Collection in Hospitals.” May, 2004. The Commonwealth Fund. Click here to read the report. Hasnain-Wynia R, Yonek J, Cohen A, and Restuccia, J. Improving Care for Individuals with Limited English Proficiency: Facilitators and Barriers to Providing Language Services in California Public Hospitals. October, 2009. The California Endowment. Click here to read the report.
Rittner SS, Hasnain-Wynia R, Scanlon DP, Farley D and Telenko S. “Collecting Race, Ethnicity, and Primary Language Data in Physician Practices: The Minnesota Community Measurement Experience.” Issue Brief for Aligning Forces for Quality Evaluation. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Click here to read the report. Wynia M, Hasnain-Wynia R, Hotze T, Ivey SL. Collecting and using race, ethnicity and language data in ambulatory settings: a white paper with recommendations from the Commission to End Health Care Disparities. Chicago: American Medical Association; 2011. Click here to read the report. |
PublicationsVan Dyke, K. J., McHugh, M., Yonek, J., & Moss, D. (2011). Facilitators and Barriers to the Implementation of Patient Flow Improvement Strategies. Quality Management in Healthcare, 20(3), 223. Baily SC, Hasnain-Wynia R, Chen AH, Sarkar U, Lindquist LA, Schillinger D, Wolf MS. Developing Multilingual Prescription Instructions for Patients with Limited English Proficiency. Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved. February 2012. Weissman J, Hasnain-Wynia R, Kang R, Landrum MB, Vogeli C, Weinick R, Lezzoni L. Pay-For-Performance Programs to Reduce Racial/Ethnic disparities: What Might Different Designs Achieve? Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved. February 2012. Tanabe, P and Hasnain-Wynia, R. Promoting Equity: Developing Quality Measures for Sickle Cell Disease. American Journal of Medical Quality. November 2011. Toledo, P., Sun, J., Grobman, W. A., Wong, C. A., Feinglass, J., & Hasnain-Wynia, R. Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Neuraxial Labor Analgesia. Anesthesia & Analgesia. November 2011. Lee JC, Hasnain-Wynia R, and Lau DT. Delay in Seeing a Doctor due to Cost: Disparity between Older Adults with and without Disabilities in the United States. Health Services Research. November 2011 Goel, M. S., Brown, T. L., Williams, A., Cooper, A. J., Hasnain-Wynia, R., & Baker, D. W. Patient reported barriers to enrolling in a patient portal. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. November 2011 Weinick R., Hasnain-Wynia R., “Quality Improvement Efforts Under Health Reform: How To Ensure That They Help Reduce Disparities --Not Increase Them.” Health Affairs, 30, no.10 (2011):1837-1843. October 2011. Weissman JS., Hasnain-Wynia R., “Advancing health care equity through improved data collection.” New England Journal of Medicine. 364(24):2276-7. June 16, 2011. Blustein, J., Weissman, JS, Ryan, AM., Doran T., Hasnain-Wynia, R., “Analysis Raises Questions On Whether Pay-For-Performance In Medicaid Can Efficiently Reduce Racial And Ethnic Disparities.” Health Affairs, 30, no.6:1165-1175. June 2011. Goel MS, Simpson T, Williams A, Hasnain-Wynia R, Thompson JA, and Baker DW. Disparities in Enrollment and Use of an Electronic Patient Portal. Journal of General Internal Medicine. May 2011. Jean-Jaques M, Persell SD, Hasnain-Wynia R, Thompson JA, and Baker DW. The Implications of Using Adjusted Versus Unadjusted Methods to Measure Health Care Disparities at the Practice Level. American Journal of Medical Quality. May 2011. Alexander J, Hearld LJ, Hasnain-Wynia R, Christianson JB, and Martsolf G. Consumer Trust in Sources of Physician Quality Information. Medical Care Research and Review. May 2011. Hasnain-Wynia R, Taylor-Clark, K, and Anise A. Members Perceptions of Race/Ethnicity Data Collection by Their Health Plans. Medical Care Research and Review. October 2010. Baron KG, Lin K, Chan C, Shahar E, Hasnain-Wynia R, and Zee P. Race/ethnic variation in excessive daytime sleepiness: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Behavioral Sleep Medicine.8(4):231-45.October 2010. Barriers to Collecting Race, Ethnicity, and Primary Language Data in Physician Practices: An Exploratory Study. The Journal of the National Medical Association. Hasnain-Wynia R, Van Dyke K, Youdelman M, Krautkramer C, Ivey S, Gilchick R, Kaleba E, and Wynia MK. 102(9):769-75. September 2010. Wynia MK, Ivey SL, and Hasnain-Wynia R Collection of Data on Patients’ Race and Ethnic Group by Physician Practices--REPLY. New England Journal of Medicine. 363.July 2010. | Message from the Director
Romana Hasnain-Wynia, PhDWelcome to the Program for Healthcare Equity at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Since its inception in 2008, the Program for Healthcare Equity has been dedicated to eliminating disparities in health care, advancing equity, and improving the quality of care for all individuals by conducting original research and translating and disseminating our findings. Our mission is realized through successful collaboration with researchers, health care leaders, clinicians, policymakers, patients and their families, and community members. Our Website is designed to share our ongoing research developments, resources, and achievements related to advancing health care equity with you. Thank you for taking the time to visit our Website. Sincerely, Romana Hasnain-Wynia, PhD Toolkit for Collecting Race, Ethnicity, and Primary Language Data from Patients http://www.hretdisparities.org/ Quick Links Contact Us:Center for Healthcare Equity
750 N. Lake Shore Drive, 10th Floor
Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: 312-503-5500
Fax: 312-503-2777
Email: healthcareequity@northwestern.edu |
