L.A. Care is proud to announce that three L.A. Care employees have been accepted into the nationally recognized Disparities Leadership Program, which is designed to address racial and ethnic disparities in health care. They are Marina Acosta, Health Equity Program Director, Bettsy Santana, Quality Improvement Initiatives Manager, and Jacqueline Kalajian, Health Education Program Manager.
The Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has been leading the program since 2007. It is the first-of-its-kind, yearlong executive education program focused exclusively on helping health care leaders at hospitals, health insurance plans, and other health care organizations achieve equity in quality.
Santana, Kalajian, and Acosta are three of only 65 individuals selected for the 2020-2021 Program.
The program aims to create leaders prepared to meet the challenges of health care transformation by improving quality for at-risk populations who experience disparities. The program has three main goals:
To equip health care leaders with a rich understanding of the causes of disparities, the vision to implement solutions, and the strategies to transform their organization to deliver high-value health care.
- To help leaders create strategic plans or projects to advance their work in reducing disparities in a customized way, with practical benefits tailored to every organization.
- To create a professional learning and networking environment for leaders in health care to engage in peer-to-peer learning, crowd sourcing of ideas and strategies for reducing disparities, resource sharing, collaboration, and ongoing support in the form of a national DLP alumni network.
The Disparities Solution Center says this training is especially important in the current national call to action for social justice. The Disparities Leadership Program is jointly sponsored by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and is supported by the Joint Commission Resources (JCR), an affiliate of the Joint Commission.
L.A. Care’s Auleria Eakins, Community Outreach and Engagement Manager, and Nai Kasick, Health Services Senior Director, participated in the 2012-2013 Disparities Leadership Program.