Funding and Partnerships

Disparity Impact Strategy

Vision

Optimal health requires health equity

Background

Released in April 2011, the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities included a Secretarial priority to: "Assess and heighten the impact of all HHS policies, programs, processes, and resource decisions to reduce health disparities. HHS leadership will ensure that Program grantees, as applicable, will be required to submit a Health Disparity Impact Statement as part of their grant applications."

Policy and Data Drivers

Executive Order 13985 - Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government calls for a comprehensive approach to advance equity and for agencies to assess whether, and to what extent, its programs and policies perpetuate systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits for people of color and other underserved groups.

HP 2020 - a health disparity is a health difference that is closely linked with social, economic or environmental disadvantage.

HP 2030 - includes a goal to "eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all."

Guidance for Preparing a Disparity Impact Statement
[PDF 280KB]

Overview

The HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) aims to improve minority health, improve the quality of health care that minorities receive and eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. These efforts include evaluating the effectiveness of activities aimed at reducing health disparities and supporting the local community.

OMH's Disparity Impact Strategy is a comprehensive data-driven approach for identifying and addressing health disparities to promote health equity for racial and ethnic minority populations that:

  1. Creates a strategic focus on health disparities and opportunities for promoting health equity
  2. Uses a data-informed quality improvement approach to address racial and ethnic disparities
  3. Incorporates a health equity lens into grant-making operations

Implementation Highlights

OMH's Disparity Impact Strategy is a cross-cutting effort that reinforces efforts to eliminate health disparities and promote health equity by:

  • Embedding a measurement framework for improving the access, use and outcomes of grant programs into notices of funding opportunity
  • Requiring the submission of disparity impact statements from grant recipients that identify the anticipated program impact on health disparities and related outcomes
  • Using a data-informed quality improvement approach, that incorporates the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (National CLAS Standards), to monitor program impact on health disparities

Core Components