Posted on October 25, 2009

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Finding Answers Awards $1.5 Million to Evaluate Measures to Reduce Healthcare Disparities

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has announced more than $1.5 million in grants to seven organizations working to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care.

Awarded through the foundation's Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change initiative, a national program housed at the University of Chicago, grants of up to $258,500 will be used by each recipient organization to evaluate interventions designed to reduce disparities in health outcomes in their communities, with a focus on cardiovascular disease, depression, and diabetes - diseases for which there are clear standards of care and strong evidence that certain racial and ethnic groups receive lower-quality care.

In an effort to identify practical knowledge and steps to be taken, grantees will provide detailed assessments of the implementation, start-up and maintenance costs, and effectiveness of specific interventions. In turn, researchers will evaluate the potential of interventions for real-world implementation and will alert doctors, nurses, hospitals, and health plans to promising practices.

The seven organizations selected by the foundation in this third round of funding are Aaron E. Henry Community Health Services, Inc. (Mississippi); Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital (Massachusetts); CIGNA HealthCare Mid-Atlantic (Georgia); the Denver Health and Hospitals Foundation (Colorado); and the Fund for Public Health in New York (New York).

"These grantees will work with the health care community to identify successful approaches to reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care," said Marshall H. Chin, director of the Finding Answers program and professor of medicine at the University of Chicago's Department of Medicine and the Center for Health and the Social Sciences. "The interventions being evaluated as part of this program have been selected for their potential to be replicated and sustained in communities throughout the United States."

Primary Subject: Health

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