California Health Care Foundation 4/18/2022

The California Improvement Network (CIN) is focused on effectively integrating equity into health care improvement projects. Informed by its Racial Health Equity Workgroup and developed in partnership with HealthBegins, this practical toolkit is designed to help health care organizations — including those that provide, pay for, or support primary care — to increase the primary care improvement efforts that center racial equity.

Because health equity, including racial health equity, is shaped by social and structural factors, providers must better identify the structural, institutional, and social drivers of health equity at community, system, and individual levels. This means building practice-level capacity to integrate behavioral health and social care, supporting internal transformation of institutional norms and policies, and participating in cross-sector community-level efforts to address social and structural drivers of health equity.

This toolkit offers seven concrete opportunities to act and advance health equity along a “road map of improvement.” Each opportunity is described and supported with tactics and practical resources. Case studies provide insights into how organizations have implemented improvements.

• Opportunity 1: Organize Teams
• Opportunity 2: Collect Data on Race, Ethnicity, and Language
• Opportunity 3: Identify Measures to Stratify by Race, Ethnicity, and Language
• Opportunity 4: Analyze and Identify Root Causes of Identified Inequities
• Opportunity 5: Co-design Improvement Efforts
• Opportunity 6: Guide and Monitor Improvement Efforts Using Dashboards
• Opportunity 7: Inform and Accelerate Institutional Transformation and Community Action

A Toolkit to Advance Racial Health Equity in Primary Care Improvement (PDF)