Care Teams and Workforce Guide

Health equity—the principle that each person has an opportunity to be as healthy as possible—is enhanced by improving access to the conditions and resources that support health.^[1]

The right care team model can advance equity by ensuring team members have the right skills, composition and understanding of how to address structural barriers to health for their patients. Practices can contribute to improving health and reducing disparities as they build their care teams by:

• Prioritize lived experience during hiring and recruitment. CalAIM’s expanded coverage of community health services may enable practices to recruit staff to do more to understand and address health-related social needs that impact patients.
• This resource center developed by the California Health Care Foundation provides tools, training and in-depth guides to integrate community health workers and promoter workforce to support patients: Advancing California’s Community Health Worker & Promotor Workforce in Medi-Cal.
• This website developed by the University of Washington’s human resources department includes best practices, checklists and pragmatic resources for inclusive hiring: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Inclusive hiring.
• A blog by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement outlines four strategies to overcome resistance to prioritizing inclusive hiring: 4 Ways to Improve Workplace Diversity and Equity Hiring.

Explore racial, ethnic and cultural concordance between providers and patients, as well as sexual orientation and gender identity preferences. These are potentially powerful considerations for improving health. Consider these dynamics when structuring patient panels and care teams.

• This brief by the Urban Institute explains the importance of racial, ethnic and linguistic concordance between patients and providers: Racial, Ethnic, and Language Concordance between Patients and Their Usual Health Care Providers.
• This is a free e-learning program offered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to improve cultural competence and cultural humility around maternal healthcare: Maternal Health Care.

Think about how power and expertise is shared among staff, providers, patients and their families, including building psychologically safe environments and practicing shared decision-making. Power sharing with community partners also builds stronger partnerships that advance equitable health care.

• This guide created by the ACT Center, a part of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, provides examples and templates for how to engage patients deeply in quality improvement efforts: Collecting Patient Data: Improving Health Equity in Your Practice.
• This resource guide developed by the Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care helps primary care practices advance patient- and family-centered care by providing concrete steps including recruitment and support strategies to effectively partner with patients and families: Advancing the Practice of Patient and Family-Centered Care in Primary Care and Other Ambulatory Settings.
• This document shared by the National Academy of Medicine provides important principles to guide transformative partnerships with local communities: Building Community Power to Achieve Health and Racial Equity: Principles to Guide Transformative Partnerships with Local Communities.
• This brief from the Center for Health Care Strategies shares lessons from seven health care organizations about partnering with patients and communities of color to promote health equity: Engaging Communities of Color to Promote Health Equity: Five Lessons from New York-Based Health Care Organizations.

Support teams’ skills and abilities to address the needs of subpopulations of patients, and attend to their specific care needs and structural barriers to health, including tailoring interventions to address root causes of disparities.

• The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) has developed the free Health Equity and Social Justice (HESJ) 101 Online Training Series to build knowledge and inform practices on key concepts, principles and applications of health equity: Health Equity and Social Justice.
• This evaluation published by the Association of American Medical Colleges provides a training framework for interprofessional teams on the structural factors that produce health disparities: Structural Competency: Curriculum for Medical Students, Residents, and Interprofessional Teams on the Structural Factors That Produce Health Disparities.
• This case study published by the Safety Net Institute highlights how the Riverside University Health System developed an initiative to train and build skills of their workforce to address diversity, equity and inclusion: Reaching for Health Equity (With Peers) at Riverside University Health System.
• This publication from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Health Care provides lessons and clinical best practices for how to improve the care of LGBTQ people of color: Improving Care of LGBTQ People of Color.