Achieving Health Equity
Certain groups suffer disproportionately in the face of serious illness, whether because of race, geography, income, sexual orientation, gender identity, culture, trauma history, or any of the myriad factors that impact patient care and patient experience.
Health professionals have a unique opportunity to lead in achieving health equity by establishing trust and alleviating suffering for traditionally oppressed or excluded patients. This toolkit provides curated tools and resources to improve the quality of care provided to these patient groups, and move the needle on equity for all people living with serious illness. We also recommend reviewing CAPC’s health equity blog series for additional information and resources.
What’s in the Toolkit
Role of Palliative Care in Addressing Health Equity
These CAPC resources provide information on various health equity issues that exist for people with serious illness, and strategies for palliative care professionals to provide more equitable care.
Foundational guidance for leaders to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging principles into health care organizations.
In this on-demand national briefing, speakers discuss key findings from CAPC’s national scan on improving care for black patients living with serious illness, and interventions that address disparities.
Join this Virtual Office Hour, Achieving Health Equity and Reducing Implicit Bias in Palliative Care, to learn about health disparities in the care of people living with serious illness.
Strategies palliative care teams can employ to ensure racial and ethnic communities have access to care that relieves suffering.
Compilation of policy recommendations to improve the care of Black patients living with serious illness and their families.
In this on-demand webinar, panelists provide practical ways palliative care leaders can advance DEI practices in hiring and retention, team culture and composition, and clinical care delivery.
In this on-demand webinar, the presenter demonstrates how health professionals can examine biases through the lens of two clinical palliative care cases.
In this on-demand webinar, panelists discuss ways to identify how structural racism is operating at your institution, and actions both programs and individuals can take to promote health equity.
This on-demand webinar discusses the importance of addressing the spiritual care needs and existential pain of patients and caregivers, and our colleagues.
This on-demand webinar highlights CareOregon’s experience in providing outpatient palliative care to Portland's most complex patients, and ways to address medical, behavioral health, housing, and social support needs.
This Master Clinician describes the unintended consequences of implicit bias on health care disparities and shares a practical framework for how teams can begin to address these issues to enhance patient care.
Workshop Materials: Key Insights to Implement Equity-focused Models
Presentations and resources from CAPC's Health Equity Workshop Series.
This slide deck, presented by Dr. Niharika Ganta, provides an overview of the "Upstander" Allyship training provided to palliative care clinicians at Penn Medicine.
This slide deck, presented by Dr. Rachel Sherman, provides an overview of the work being done by Hospice of the Chesapeake to address health disparties for Black patients with serious illness.
This slide deck provides an overview of the UCSF Palliative Care team's data collection project aimed at increasing palliative care clinic visits by Black and Latino patients.
How the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) palliative care team is using data to increase clinic visits by Black and Latino Patients.
The following script was created by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is shared by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) for educational purposes only. This serves as a guide for those looking to implement inclusive interviews.
This slide deck provides an overview of the Hackensack University Medical Center's palliative care intervention for patients with Sickle Cell Anemia.
How the palliative care team at Hackensack University Medical Center created a process so every patient with a sickle cell anemia crisis or related acute admission is seen by the palliative care service.
This slide deck provides an overview of the UAB team's work on Project Cornerstone, an equity intervention led by specially trained lay navigators.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Project Cornerstone addresses the gap in resources specifically designed for Black family members/caregivers of patients living with cancer.
This slide deck provides an overview of the AC Care Alliance Advanced Illness Care Program (ACIP), a care navigator led model developed to address the unique needs of this population, addressing serious illness care disparities in communities of color and advancing equity.
The AC Care Alliance created the Advanced Illness Care Program (AICP), which uses a Five Cornerstone approach to address the unique needs of Black people will serious illness.
Accessibility and Inclusiveness
With wide variation in the care experience of diverse patients, and their families, these resources offer ideas for increasing accessibility and inclusiveness for historically excluded patient populations.
CAPC 2x4 poster on assessing baseline attitudes about diversity, health equity, and inclusion on an interdisciplinary palliative care team.
Slide deck providing information on how telehealth, if developed with intention, can improve access and equity especially in rural, underserved populations.
NHPCO’s compilation of tools and resource guides to increase access to hospice and palliative care services within diverse communities.
In this on-demand Master Clinician session, members of a palliative care team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will provide an overview of the multidimensional approach to inclusive and affirmative palliative care for the LGBTQ+ community.
A palliative care physician discusses some of the unique needs and experiences of LGBTQ+ patients, and how clinicians can improve care for these populations.
Addressing Social Determinants of Health
Tools to incorporate the intersectionality and unique care experiences of certain populations living with serious illness to improve their care quality.
The goal of this learning activity is to equip clinicians across all disciplines with the tools to foster effective and inviting clinical encounters with seriously ill patients.
This learning activity, Practicing Inclusive Clinical Encounters, will help clinicians integrate strategies for effective and inclusive clinical encounters into their daily practice.
CAPC 2x4 poster using a quality improvement project to assess the feasibility of implementing a screening question on racism into a palliative care consult note.
CAPC 2x4 poster using case review of Hispanic oncology patients in an inpatient setting and ways to overcome barriers via an interpreter.
In this GeriPal podcast episode, Drs. Carey Candrian and Angela Primbas describe the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender older adults and how the care recieved later in life can either empower or continue to stigmatize these communities.
Community Assessment: A Health Equity Learning Activity
This self-directed learning activity provides community and acute care palliative care programs with a foundation of knowledge in social determinants of health and health equity within palliative care. It guides the participant through a process to a) Understand the various definitions of social determinants of health, b) Review the current state of health equity within palliative care, c) Analyze the demographics within their program’s geography, d) Identify resources within their community, and e) Create a strategic plan to deliver more inclusive and culturally responsive palliative care.
This guide provides foundational concepts, and uses community mapping and asset mapping processes to foster more inclusive palliative care.
A comprehensive list of the literature cited within the learning activity guide, which supports the concepts, processes, and principles of health equity and social determinants of health within palliative care.
After completing the Community Assessment Learning Activity, please complete this short evaluation. Your feedback is important to us.
Clinical Resources
Recommended clinical tools to standardize the way in which symptoms are captured for underserved patient populations, and considerations to incorporate cultural humility into communication and care plans for patients with serious illness.
Recommended assessment questions to typify pain and inform pain management for patients with serious illness.
Cultural assessment document with a mnemonic approach to improve communication with patients and families.
Defines cultural humility and how it influences patient care and offers ways to provide culturally humble care.
Sample script to help clinicians better understand patients’ experiences and meet needs, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Defines unconscious bias and how it influences patient care, and provides ways to reduce the impact of unconscious bias on care delivery.
Developed by the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), this two-page fact sheet describes a trauma-informed approach to care to provide effective health care services.
Faculty
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Karen Bullock, PhD, LCSW, APHSW-C
Endowed Professor of Social Work at Boston College
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Brittany Chambers, MPH, MCHES
Director, Health Equity and Special Initiatives
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Constance Dahlin, MSN, ANP-BC, ACHPN, FPCN, FAAN
Consultant
Center to Advance Palliative Care -
Sherika Newman, DO
Founder, Doctor in the Family
Atlanta, GA based company -
Allison Silvers, MBA
Chief Health Care Transformation Officer
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Brynn Bowman, MPA
Chief Executive Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care