Closing the Gender Pay Gap for Female Nurses Promotes Equity and Supports the Health Care Workforce

By Ulrike Muench, RN, PhD, FAAN, Faculty, Healthforce Center at UCSF

 

Patterns of pay disparities based on gender continue to be a high-priority concern for the health care workforce. Recent legislation and policies at all levels of government have been passed with the goal to end gender inequity in pay, recognizing the right to equal pay for doing equal work or work of the same value.

Healthforce Center's Journey to Advance Equity in Our Workplace

By Marie Hubbard, Senior Program Manager and Dr. Sunita Mutha, Director

Photo: Healthforce Center staff volunteering at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank in October 2023, from left: Kyoko Peterson, Sofia Sandoval, Melissa Lucas, Khadijat Alli, Xenia Mendez, Marie Hubbard, Vaishnavi Vaidya, Janet Coffman, Sunita Mutha, Sutep Laohavanich, Beth Mertz, and Liwam Nerayo.

 

Understanding Indigenous Communities to Support Their Health Needs

Indigenous communities in California and throughout the United States face striking health disparities. At 71.8 years, American Indian and Alaska Native individuals have the lowest life expectancy compared with other races and ethnicities. They are 2.3 times more likely to die from diabetes than white people and they have the highest rate of suicide compared with all other racial and ethnic groups (28.1 per 100,000).

Equitable Co-design in Health Care: How to Incorporate Community Voices to Impact Systems

By the California Improvement Network Team

Photo of Stella Safo, Karyn Young-Lowe, and Sunita Mutha at the CIN partner meeting in March 2023 (photo credit: Sonya Yruel).

First Primary Care Scorecard: What It Reveals and What Comes Next

Access to primary medical care is closely associated with better health outcomes for patients, fewer hospital visits, and longer life spans. Yet in the United States, primary care spending for all payers accounted for merely 4.6% to 12.1% of total health care expenditures, depending on how broadly primary care is defined. For the first time, a national scorecard provides a deep dive into where primary care is lacking within a matrix of recommendations.

Community-Based Organizations to Join Reimagined California Improvement Network

By Kathryn E. Phillips, Associate Director, California Health Care Foundation

Photo: Brett Perkinson receives his weekly supply of medically tailored meals delivered from a community-based organization to his home in Aptos, just outside of the city of Santa Cruz. Credit: Shmuel Thaler

 

Celebrating our Achievements: CIN Advanced Racial Health Equity and More

The California Improvement Network (CIN), a project of the California Health Care Foundation that is managed by Healthforce Center at UCSF, is a community of health care professionals that has been striving since 2005 to identify and spread ideas to improve health care delivery in California. CIN’s most recent cycle — the last two and a half years — was especially challenging due to the pandemic. Despite making its activities entirely virtual, CIN sustained and strengthened relationships across health care silos and inspired actions to improve care in California.

Supporting Access and Equity in Primary Care Through New Payment Models

Investment in primary care has the power to improve health equity more than any other part of our health care system. Immediate and concerted action is needed by payers serving the same communities to collaborate on how they pay for primary care to improve health equity and address disparities in care. Healthforce Center’s Director Dr. Sunita Mutha offered her expert insights on this December 2021 panel about how Californians can work together to realize a future vision for better primary care.