Boston's Center for Health Equity and Social Justice: Addressing health care disparities through data collection regulation and quality improvement strategies

The Center for Health Equity and Social Justice at the Boston Public Health Commission works to eliminate racial and ethnic health inequities among city residents. The Commission recognizes that an accurate and consistent system for collecting patient demographics and clinical outcomes is essential to identifying and combating differences in health care utilization and health outcomes. In July 2006 the Commission's Board of Health voted in favor of mandatory data collection regulations. Currently, all acute care hospitals in the city collect information on each patient's race, ethnicity, preferred language, and education level. A Health Equity Committee, consisting of representatives from hospitals and health centers, is charged with developing a data reporting framework and quality improvement strategies for all clinical settings. The Committee will determine a set of clinical measures that all clinical sites will collect and report to the Commission. We hope to share Boston's experiences and strategies to expand the implementation of the data regulations to all Boston community health centers; we believe that accurate data collection is a powerful tool in eliminating health disparities and improving quality of care. We also hope to highlight the demographic data we have gathered to date and the process the Committee used to select quality measures for the reduction of health care disparities. Armed with comprehensive patient demographic and clinical data, health departments and health institutions will be better suited to develop public health programs and interventions that target the needs of their population and reduce disparities in care and health outcomes.