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Advancing health equity

Several people around a table in a business meeting

To be truly healthy, employees need access to equitable health care and comprehensive social health support. Offering these workforce health essentials can help you attract and retain a diverse team, boost employee engagement, and lower your health care costs. By partnering with a leader in both health equity and social health, you can give your business a powerful competitive edge.

Driving health equity and eliminating disparities

While significant progress has been made in advancing health equity, disparities in care persist for far too many people. Biases and discrimination lead to poorer physical, mental, and social health outcomes and diminished quality of life — posing serious threats to employee engagement and work performance. All your employees deserve the high-quality, equitable care that Kaiser Permanente is proven to deliver.

A person sitting in a chair with a nurse and text

Leveraging data to identify disparities and enable better care

Measuring health outcomes by race and ethnicity gives us valuable data — and when that data reveals disparities between people of different demographics, we close those gaps through targeted outreach, culturally responsive care, and meaningful steps to improve clinical performance to better serve our diverse members.

We have complete race, ethnicity, and language data on 82% of our members and counting. Outside Kaiser Permanente, just 24% of commercial health plans have complete race data on their members, and a mere 6% have complete ethnicity data.³ And fewer than one-third of non Kaiser Permanente hospitals that do collect this data are proactively using it to help improve care delivery.⁴

Outpacing the nation in equitable care

Asian, Black, and Latino Kaiser Permanente members score in the top 10% across several key quality metrics.^{5, 6}

Find the right plan for your diverse workforce. 877-305-7933

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Social health is a vital sign. Is your health plan screening for it?

Good health requires more than just good health care. Social and economic factors have a big impact on employee health — and on your business’s bottom line. In fact, employees with unmet social needs are more than twice as likely to skip needed health care, and to miss 6 or more workdays per year.⁷ They’re also 6 times more likely to report poor mental health.⁸ Shockingly, 44% of employees report at least one unmet social need.⁹

Social and economic factors have the highest impact on health

What determines an employee’s total health?¹⁰

40% social and economic factors
30% health behaviors
20% clinical care
10% physical environment

Person talking with doctor, surrounded by social health resources

Using social health as a measure of total health

Kaiser Permanente’s rich data and connected, team-based care model help us identify social health needs and develop initiatives that address the areas where we can make the greatest impact. To date, we’ve screened more than 2.5 million members for social needs, and plan to screen the rest by 2025.¹¹ These screenings enable us to deliver more personalized treatment, and connect members to the social health resources they need — both within our system and out in the community.

Addressing social health can save businesses billions

Connecting employees to community-based social health resources can save employers $2,443 per employee, per year.¹²

Choose a health plan devoted to eliminating inequities and disparities

In addition to delivering equitable care and integrated clinical and social health support, we’ll also help you implement wellness solutions to address these issues head-on — and empower each employee to be as healthy as they can possibly be.

Find the right plan for your diverse workforce. 877-305-7933

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Footnotes:

¹Cooper et al., American Journal of Managed Care, May 13, 2021. Data is from our Southern California region, compared with other California hospitals. Continue at [1]
²An infographic about how equitable care drives healthier outcomes at Kaiser Permanente and compares the higher survival rates of Black cancer patients (14% higher than the national average), and Latino cancer patients (23% higher than the national average). Continue at [2]
³Rachel Harrington et al., “A New Effort to Address Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Care Through Quality Measurement,” Health Affairs Blog, September 9, 2021. Continue at [3]
⁴“Health Equity Snapshot, a Toolkit for Action,” Institute for Diversity and Health Equity, American Hospital Association, December 2020. Continue at [4]
⁵Kaiser Permanente Equitable Care Health Outcomes (ECHO) Report, Q4 2022, accessed October 2, 2023; NCQA Quality Compass, 2022. Continue at [5]
⁶A bar graph comparing the health care metrics between Asian, Black, and Latino Kaiser Permanente members and the national averages across all ethnicities across 5 categories of health care services: Breast cancer screenings (Kaiser Permanente members 85% v. national average 71%), Cervical cancer screenings (Kaiser Permanente members 82% v. national average 74%), Colorectal cancer screenings (Kaiser Permanente members 82% v. national average 63%), High blood pressure control (Kaiser Permanente members 78% v. national average 56%), Timely prenatal care (Kaiser Permanente members 93% v. national average 79%) Continue at [6]
⁷Jenny Cordina et al., “Income Alone May Be Insufficient: How Employers Can Help Advance Health Equity in the Workplace,” McKinsey & Company, December 3, 2021. Continue at [7]
⁸Erica Hutchins Coe et al., “Insights from McKinsey’s Consumer Social Determinants of Health Survey,” McKinsey & Company, April 30, 2019. Continue at [8]
⁹Erica Hutchins Coe et al., “Understanding the Impact of Unmet Social Needs on Consumer Health and Healthcare,” McKinsey & Company, February 20, 2020. Continue at [9]
¹⁰The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, 2022, www.countyhealthrankings.org. Continue at [10]
¹¹Kaiser Permanente internal data. Continue at [11]
¹²Zachary Pruitt et al., “Expenditure Reductions Associated with a Social Service Referral Program,” Population Health Management, December 2018. Continue at [12]