Rise to Health partners with pharmas to tackle healthcare inequity

The newly launched coalition Rise to Health wants to un-silo healthcare industry players to work together for equity — and that means pharma too.

Helmed by the American Medical Association, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and Race Forward, the initiative, for which Genentech is founding lead funder, is leaning on the pharma industry to do its part around issues like access and pricing. And it’s not just about holding meetings and talking about solutions.

Kedar Mate

“We’re really focused on changing practices,” said IHI president and CEO Kedar Mate. “It’s about getting to work, asking leaders from pharma and biotech to commit to specific actions that will help us change the story.”

Along with Genentech, the group is working with Bristol Myers Squibb and several other pharmaceutical companies, he said, although it’s admittedly still in the early stages compared to its work with healthcare providers. Rise to Health officially launched last week, but the work and foundation-laying began two years ago.

One of the big challenges Mate and the initiative are tackling is to convince people in the industry that inequities in healthcare and substandard outcomes aren’t just the way it is and will always be in American healthcare.

He offered an example of how real change can happen with the data findings from the emergency rooms of one specific health system that showed Black patients who presented with the exact same signs and symptoms of stroke that white patients presented with had much more significant delays in getting treatment. Black people waited about twice the amount of time that white people waited, in fact. Once the ER doctors got over their shock and disbelief (and double and triple checked the data), he said, they committed to change. Within 11 weeks, they had completely eliminated the disparity across the ERs in their system.

“My point of that story is not only do people think ‘these things happen and it’s just part of our system so just move on,’ but the answer is no, not really and they don’t have to be. As it turns out, we can do something about it,” Mate said. “Here’s an example of a system that’s done something very dramatic in a very short period of time to try to undo the history of structural racism and inequity that is big and one might argue, part of the fabric of our system, but it can be unwound.”

Next, Rise to Health is planning a series of monthly conversations with biotech and pharma leaders presented as fireside chats and webinars with real examples and suggestions for what companies can do — and continuing to look for companies to participate. The group is also going to offer individual coaching on issues like advancing access to diagnostics and therapies, and making them more affordable, Mate said.

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