Health Equity - Economic Impact of Health Disparities

Meg Guerin-Calvert presented to the National Forum for Heart Disease & Stroke Prevention’s 20th Annual Meeting on “Health Equity Benefits Everyone.” Meg shared how stakeholders during the pandemic broke down silos, formed trusted relationships, and saw the impact of poor health and health disparities in communities exacerbated by the pandemic. She discussed how robust data and advanced analytics to quantify drivers and total (productivity, medical) costs of poor health can extend to health disparities and social determinants of health and help collaboratives discern new priorities and action.

Our expertise brings extensive datasets, metrics and modeling to quantify total economic costs and adapts its modeling to assess specific community needs including disparities for insights into economic benefit.

Key Highlights:

• Economic impact of poor health & disparities are high: Lost productivity and medical costs from chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes) tax a community, its business and residents with reduced vitality and competitiveness; with significant additional costs from health disparities.

• Stakeholders need actionable & robust data analytics to quantify economic impact of health & disparities community and peer communities

• Quantifying drivers and total costs of poor health & disparities reframes narratives around impact on community well-being and economic prosperity: Collaboratives empowered with insights on costs, benefits and savings can redefine priorities for action and tracking.

• New collaboratives break down silos: Community and business leaders should look at healthcare not just as a cost or public health issue, but an investment in their people and economic and social future of their communities.