Our approach to addressing health disparities is based on courses I taught at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Southern California, my work with public health, healthcare, and aging-related community and government organizations across the United States, and my research on the social determinants of health.

Based on this work, I developed a framework that starts with a commitment to reduce/eliminate health disparities and work towards health equity, where senior leadership makes a decision to address demographic group differences – such as by race, place, and gender – in health outcomes, clinical processes and outcomes, and social drivers of health/healthcare. The framework also includes steps such as:

• outlining processes for defining key terms,

• methods for measuring differences,

• and evaluating the impact of programs to eliminate disparities.