Health Equity Progress Report

“Of all the forms of inequity, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.”  These words were spoken by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during a March 25, 1966, press conference at an annual meeting of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Chicago. Dr. King acknowledged that rethinking and undoing inequality would not be an easy task. In a subsequent press release, on April 16, 1966, the Cleveland Call and Post published a slightly different version of the legendary quote. The complete quote was, “Of all the forms of inequity, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman because it often results in physical death. I see no alternative to direct action and creative nonviolence to raise the conscience of the nation.”

September 16, 2023 is an important milestone for ABFM in that it marks the three-year anniversary of the day we took direct action to address health disparities through a comprehensive strategy that actively addresses health equity. Our emphasis is on improving health equity across race, ethnicity, gender, rurality, and groups that have been economically or socially marginalized and to focus on what a certifying board can do to positively contribute to this effort. This includes integrating health equity into performance improvement and other certification activities, assisting in the spread of relevant clinical knowledge, assuring that our examinations are fair and culturally sensitive, conducting research to address health equity and enable family physicians to act in their own communities.

We are also committed to public accountability. Since our last report to Diplomates in January 2022, we have made progress. We have supported several thousand Diplomates who have worked to address health disparities and have achieved important improvements in measured quality of care for at risk groups; several thousand others have sought out knowledge self-assessments on disparities and social determinants of health. After three years of work, the new residency standards for family medicine became effective in July 2023, and now include a major focus on community engagement and address social determinants of health and health disparities.

Health equity has been a major focus for the ABFM Research Department and the Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care (CPV) over the last year. In addition to ongoing research around gender equity in pay and risk of burnout, including the Sustaining Women in Medicine project, CPV has worked with Medicare and many partners to make the policy case for adjustment of payment to support community interventions. Finally, in Washington, DC in July, the CPV collaborated with multiple partners to hold an international conference on Essential Role of Primary Health Care for Health Security and Securing Health Conference, with a primary focus on improving health equity, building on the 2021 NASEM report.

Finally, another addition to our work includes a national cultural communication campaign aimed at increasing awareness of specific cultures and identities for which there are known health disparities supported by data. We feature ABFM Diplomates and their stories through our Health Equity in Action article series. This fall, we recognized Hispanic Heritage Month by highlighting the opportunities and challenges for Hispanic patients and physicians by sharing a language concordance study that analyzed the use of the Spanish language in hospital settings. Two Pisacano Scholars led this study, along with help from ABFM Board Chair Dr. Gerardo Moreno and the ABFM Research Department.

To learn more about ABFM’s progress on all our health equity initiatives, please review the report.