As Kaiser Permanente’s effort to address workforce health equity continues to evolve, their ability to track and address disparities in well-being outcomes within the employee population has advanced. This session will describe a novel approach to measuring health equity in the employee population and how they use this information to guide their health equity strategy. Utilizing several different data gathering mechanisms, including employee surveys and direct access to the electronic medical record, they can collect and analyze employee population level health outcome data, employee perceptions of the culture of health and well-being within the organization, and employees’ self-reported well-being across a variety of indicators. All this data can be broken down by demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and gender. The data is analyzed to inform the overall health equity strategy and direct efforts towards employee sub-populations that are experiencing disparities in health and well-being outcomes.
A multi-departmental collaboration between the Workforce Well-being; National Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity; and Talent and Organizational Performance departments guides these efforts to address health equity within the organization. Primary means of reaching different employee demographic populations with programs and resources is through Business Resource Groups (BRGs), which deliver culturally relevant health and well-being messages to diverse employee populations. The BRG program is comprised of 10 unique communities. This session will conclude by describing a specific example of how one of the BRGs has provided mental health supports catered specifically for their constituent population.
Learning Objectives
After completing this session, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the mechanisms Kaiser Permanente employs to understand health disparities and equity within its workforce.
2. Articulate the importance of being able to measure and track health equity metrics as an essential component of an employee well-being strategy.
3. Apply learnings to their own organization’s efforts to measure and address health equity within their workforce. 1 ADV CECH Available