The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) is the nation’s leading health policy group working to advance the health and well-being of over 20 million Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AAs and NHPIs) across the U.S. and territories. As such, APIAHF works to improve access to and the quality of care for communities who are predominately immigrant, many of whom are limited English proficient, and may be new to the U.S. health care system or unfamiliar with private or public coverage. APIAHF appreciates the opportunity to review and comment on the draft report “A Roadmap to Reduce Healthcare Disparities Through Measurement,” (Report).
Overall, we wish to express our strong support for and adoption of the Report and the National Quality Forum’s (NQF) work to develop an integrated roadmap to identifying and eventually eliminating health and healthcare disparities. The Report contains an extensive framework for identifying performance measures that address social risk factors for chronic diseases as a way to eliminate disparities and achieve health equity. Such work is critical at a time of rapid change in the healthcare delivery system and underscores, as outlined in the Report, the need for integration and emphasis of achieving health equity as an explicit goal in the process. Having performance measures that are evidence-based, broad in their scope so as to address various social risk factors for chronic conditions that disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities and others who are limited English proficient and/or experience other barriers to good health and quality health care, is critical to monitoring, assessing, evaluating and eventually eliminating disparities. Performance measures are a critical lever in achieving health equity and APIAHF welcomes NQF’s Report on the issue.
We agree with the four-part model as a way of recognizing the value and accountability that all sectors, including payers, policymakers, providers and patients have in eliminating disparities. The Report and emphasis on sector-specific analysis recognizes the unique roles, assets and obligations each have in eliminating disparities. In particular, we welcome the inclusion of policymakers as well as community organizations that serve diverse groups and can serve as aggregators of information and resources and trusted messengers.