Health equity proponents are lauding news shared this week by the American Medical Association (AMA) that its latest expansive survey found that health organizations are making substantive, quantifiable gains in advancing health equity. During Sunday’s meeting of the AMA’s House of Delegates, Aletha Maybank, the chief health equity officer at AMA, shared the survey results and noted that a peer-reviewed article focusing on this topic in depth is pending publication.
The study’s results are notable, in part due to the surveyed organizations’ reporting that they have either already eliminated, or are working to eradicate, race-based clinical algorithms that, for example, wrongly employ race as a proxy for biological ancestry.
The consistency of strides being made among the survey’s respondents is particularly significant given the breadth of organizations that participated in the AMA’s review. Specifically, over 80 organizations provided feedback to the AMA, including 39 specialty societies, 29 state and territorial health associations, and over 15 city and county health organizations.
Among the participants, 72% have taken steps to include equity as a strategic priority, while nearly 75% already have proceeded with actions to ensure historical and local geographical contexts are incorporated. While there was widespread agreement at the House of Delegates meeting that much additional work remains ahead to reduce health disparities, the data represents a positive indication that the trajectory of change is moving in the right direction. As noted by the AMA at its meeting, the key remains to continue the constructive momentum and to build upon that success for even greater changes and impact in health equity going forward.
