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Center for Health Equity

Improve the health and well-being of every community.

Health equity — fair opportunities for optimal health

Health disparities impact individuals, families and communities, and result from pervasive social, economic and/or environmental disadvantages, including poverty, structural racism and discrimination.

Achieving health equity means every person has a fair and just opportunity to become as healthy as possible.

Our expertise spans issues related to: 

  • Populations most at risk for health disparities 
  • Cultural competence
  • Emergency management
  • Housing, food and financial security
  • Transportation
  • Education
  • Technology access

Our tailored and targeted solutions include: 

  • Health equity “gap and opportunity” assessments
  • Strategic planning
  • Actionable analytics and data visualizations
  • Stakeholder engagement and culturally relevant communication strategies
  • Human-centered design
  • Implementation 
  • Learning and diffusion
  • Policy research
  • Evaluation support

Health equity — fair opportunities for optimal health

The Center for Health Equity, created by Optum Serve, is a center of excellence which supports equitable individual and community health.

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Hand-in-hand with clients

We work hand-in-hand with clients to accomplish their goals via end-to-end program design, implementation and evaluation services. 

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Data visualization and analytic tools

We develop and employ data visualization and analytic tools that integrate clinical, claims and socioeconomic data. This allows us to support the identification, evaluation and tracking of health equity-related goals and progress.

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Strong foundation

We bring awareness of potential bias in underlying data to create a strong foundation to meet the program, policy, analytic and reporting needs of our clients.

Health equity innovation spotlights

Supported a demonstration for older residents in HUD-assisted housing program

The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) demonstration advanced health equity by testing a model of housing and supportive services with the potential to delay nursing home care and improve health outcomes for older residents in HUD‐assisted housing.

The Lewin Group, part of Optum Serve, designed and implemented a controlled demonstration in support of this initiative.

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Addressing health inequities in care to dually eligible individuals

Those dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid experience high rates of chronic illness and high costs. Many of these individuals face systemic inequities, such as discrimination and barriers to care based on race/ethnicity, disability, and English proficiency.

The Lewin Group, part of Optum Serve, makes addressing health inequities a focus of our work by helping to improve providers' abilities to deliver disability-competent, person-centered, and culturally-competent care.

Conducted health disparities analyses to support CMS State Innovations Group

With a goal of reducing health disparities and assessing the impact of social determinants of health, The Lewin Group, part of Optum Serve, analyzed whether socioeconomic characteristics of a neighborhood — measured by an Area Deprivation Index (ADI) — in addition to health status, could support identification of high cost Medicare beneficiaries in the state of Maryland.

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Meet our experts

Grace Yang, Vice President

Grace Yang

Vice President

Insights

Issue brief: Response to COVID-19 disparities

Optum Serve used data and analytics to see why health disparities happen and how to address them to drive better health outcomes.

Social determinants of health

Complete the data picture.

COVID-19 Area Vulnerability Index

Prioritize resources and optimize care to fight COVID-19.

Priority Identification Vaccine Operating Tool (PIVOT)

PIVOT provides the data analytics and visualization needed to optimize planning, administration and monitoring of vaccines.

Vaccine Outreach - Implementing Community Engagement (VOICE)

VOICE addresses vaccine hesitancy in at-risk and vulnerable populations.

The Health Equity Alignment Solution (HEALS)

HEALS is a data analytics solution highlighting where and how inequities occur in a community, state or a health plan’s member population.