Health Equity

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released an environmental scan report that tells the emerging story of the many successes and challenges in improving COVID-19 testing and vaccination rates, especially among people who are medically or socially at disproportionate risk of COVID-19 or related adverse outcomes.

Telehealth utilization has changed over time since the steep increase from the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report updates prior findings on national trends of telehealth use through an analysis using the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey data from April 2021 through August 2022.

Effective January 1, 2023, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) eliminated enrollee cost-sharing for recommended vaccines covered under Medicare Part D. In 2021, 3.4 million people received vaccines under Part D, and annual out-of-pocket costs were $234 million.

This tip sheet provides key considerations for how organizations can identify potential diverse external partners, conduct outreach to them, and build and sustain productive relationships with them.

This guide explores opportunities to advance equity in quantitative analysis, including by recognizing common biases (e.g., research and measurement bias) and discussing specific quantitative methods and tools to help quantitative analyses address equity.

This tip sheet highlights the importance of using equitable communication and includes tips, guiding questions, and additional resources. The information is organized around three key strategies for equitable communication:

This guide explores intersectionality and why it is essential for advancing equity. It explores strategies for planning and conducting research with an intersectional lens, describes quantitative measures and methods to examine differences across groups of people with intersecting identities, and provides key considerations for using qualitative data to better understand intersectionality.

This tool describes how to conduct intensive equity assessments of existing programs, policies, and processes. The tool first describes the scoping work that needs to be done before conducting an equity assessment and then describes and provides guiding questions for each of the six steps in the in-depth equity assessment process. Those six steps are:

This tool describes the six steps for conducting equity assessments and provides tips for completing each step. Although specific steps vary by equity assessment tool and context, core steps include:

Using a national Medicaid database, the report shows significant racial/ethnic disparities in mental health service use among children during the COVID-19 pandemic.