The American Medical Association (AMA), the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and Race Forward today called for a system-wide approach to health equity, formally announcing the launch of Rise to Health: A National Coalition for Equity in Health Care. A first-of-its-kind initiative co-led by the two organizations and supported by numerous collaborators including Race Forward, the Rise to Health Coalition is centered around the vision of creating a transformed healthcare ecosystem where everyone has the power, circumstances and resources to achieve optimal health.

In response to a lack of alignment around impactful strategies and actions to advance equity in healthcare, the Rise to Health Coalition invites individuals and organizations to work together in coordinated action to align healthcare for health.

“Launching the Rise to Health Coalition represents another big step in our journey to ground the AMA, healthcare, and our nation’s healthcare system around equity with a vision of achieving optimal health for all,” said AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., M.D. “As leaders in medicine, we know that ending systemic racism in healthcare will help end health inequities for everyone. The unique, cohesive national strategy behind Rise to Health Coalition will help make progress in advancing racial justice across healthcare and eliminating inequities in the health of each one of our patients.”

To meaningfully advance its vision, the coalition is designed to:

• Mobilize and equip individuals, healthcare organizations, and healthcare industry actors with concrete skills and tools
• Sustainably change mindsets and narrative within healthcare, and
• Influence and fundamentally change policy, payment, education, standards, and practices.

“The Rise to Health Coalition is making health equity actionable. We are decidedly and urgently moving beyond describing the problem of health inequities to creating real results for real people. Measurably moving the needle is the only way we will grow this movement and convince even the most cynical skeptics that, together, we can bring about meaningful, sustainable improvement,” said IHI President and CEO Kedar Mate, M.D. “We are also making explicit the inseparable links between quality and equity. We believe there is no quality in healthcare without equity.”

Through specific aligned activities, the Rise to Health Coalition will unite health sectors for greater impact—catalyzing pillars of healthcare organizations, individual physicians and other healthcare professionals, payers, pharmaceutical, research, and biotech organizations, and professional societies to work collaboratively in prioritizing health equity and addressing systemic disparities. As a first step, members publicly commit via the coalition’s website to taking actions to improve healthcare access, workforce diversity, social and structural drivers of health, and quality and safety of care. Examples of actions include eliminating race-based clinical algorithms (professional societies), identifying inequities through harm event reporting (individual practitioners), addressing inequities by using quality and safety methods (healthcare organizations), advancing equitable benefits, networks and incentives (payers), and creating access and affordability for therapeutics (pharma/biotech/research).

In addition, the coalition will cultivate for members numerous tools to support individuals and organizations in advancing, strengthening, and aligning current health equity efforts—routinely refreshing resources, programs, and opportunities such as virtual peer-to-peer learning, networking, and technical assistance support as solutions continue to resurface.

The Rise to Health Coalition is open for anyone to participate, regardless of involvement in the targeted healthcare sector audiences. To learn more about the Rise to Health Coalition, visit risetohealthequity.org.