Healthy Memphis Common Table

Sixty percent of Memphis is African-American. If you are an African American and live in Memphis, you are three to five times more likely to have your leg amputated due to complications from diabetes than if you are white.  On average, African-American patients are hospitalized for a heart attack nine years earlier than white patients and are hospitalized for heart failure 15 years earlier. These startling health inequalities and more are contained in Healthy Memphis Common Table’s (HMCT) Health Equity Report, the first of its kind in our region. 

Health equity means that everyone – despite race, gender, or economic status – gets the same quality health care from their doctors. It means we all have the same chance at a long, healthy, thriving life. But Memphis isn’t there yet.

One of the first steps is for physicians to recognize the gaps that exist. Healthy Memphis Common Table,  along with the Memphis and Bluff City Medical Societies, is calling upon doctors to collect race, ethnicity and language data and determine whether disparities exist in their own practices. With this information, doctors will be able to make better decisions to deliver equitable quality care to everyone in Memphis.

To help address the problem, I worked with a team at HMCT to develop a Health Equity Report. The report provides a baseline summary of where we stand and presents actions we can take to address disparities in care. It examines local health care and evaluates differences in the type of care received by patients of different races, ethnicities and languages. The report then establishes a set of recommended next steps to move from discussion to action.

Achieving health equity as a community will not be easy, but we can get there if we take it step by step. To make a change, first we have to consider the status quo: Who in Memphis is getting quality health care? Who isn’t? Who is missing out on opportunities to get better care? What is keeping them from getting the best possible care for themselves and their conditions? HMCT’s Health Equity Report, available at www.healthymemphis.org, documents inequalities in health and health care and discusses the socio-economic and environmental causes of these disparities.  Once identified, HMCT offers quality improvement strategies to help physicians reduce these disparities.

HMCT produced this report with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) program. AF4Q’s goal is to improve the quality of health and health care in 16 communities across the country through interventions at the local system level. AF4Q addresses four main areas of health care improvement: quality improvement, performance measurement and public reporting, consumer engagement, and payment reform. Embedded within each of these categories is health equity.

To achieve health equity in Memphis, we can’t just look at the health of an individual; we must also address the factors that aid or hinder each person’s chances at a healthy life. HMCT’s vision is for Memphis to become one of America’s healthiest cities, and achieving better health and better care for everyone benefits us all.

Healthy Memphis Common Table’s Health Equity Report is available at www.healthymemphis.org.

Healthy Memphis Common Table Vision is to

Become One of America’s Healthiest Cities.

For more information, go to www.healthymemphis.org.

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