BlackDoctor.org (BDO) participated in a groundbreaking study that delivered new trends and insights based on a 6,001-person, four-country study. Here’s what we found.
Executive Summary:
The Business Case Health equity is every company’s business. This report — co-created by more than 25 independent
multidisciplinary experts, Atlantic Insights and Omnicom PR Group (OPRG) — unveils data and pulls back the curtain to collective insights that help meet community needs and unlock business opportunities to advance health equity.
This robust communities’ data report unearths statistics and vital individual insights that break data silos to look through the lens of health inequities from those who experience it. Our data demonstrates the extent of the problems on a global scale as well as specific challenges facing individual communities and countries. This report is a comprehensive examination of the lived experiences of people in diverse communities when accessing healthcare in the US, UK, Germany and Spain. Data pulls back the curtain to five key themes and takeaways that we’ll explore in the coming months and in 2024.
We have a deeply flawed past with health equity. Trust is lacking. Healthcare isn’t healthy. Businesses that adopt a health equity lens are central to closing health equity gaps. Together, we must listen harder and better and commit to understand, empathize, collect data, talk to communities and act. A co-creation team spent myriad hours over the past year designing health equity survey questions and examining data. Designing survey questions took vulnerability and authenticity among survey advisors to connect with one another, let down guards and get to work. These insights give us the opportunity to bridge gaps in communication by speaking through the lens of communities’ own values to earn trust and build real connection.
Data Unearths Five Key Themes
Discrimination remains a pervasive issue in healthcare systems globally, with a significant number of respondents reporting experiences of discrimination based on their age, weight, race or ethnicity, gender, finances, religion or faith, and sexual orientation or identity.
Broken trust and not feeling safe in the healthcare system is a global phenomenon. Broken trust refers to the ability of actors (healthcare providers) in the health system to understand their patient populations, connect to patients in a meaningful way to produce better health outcomes and solve problems beyond treatment and care.
Community engagement is essential to healing broken trust and promoting health seeking behavior via meaningfully and actively bringing trusted community leaders such as the faith-based community and community healers into the healthcare ecosystem to implement health promotion and education, as well as retention to care and treatment.
Digital divide is a global trend, such that the combination of the internet and social media are the two most frequently used methods for obtaining health information, for themselves and/or their families.
Lack of emotional intelligence and connection are top of mind globally. When looking for healthcare providers, people look for values such as trust, understanding, compassion, respect, competency, and empathy. Communities in different geographies differ in what they value emotionally, and as communicators, our language must reflect values.
Three in four healthcare professionals and providers agree and expect the pharma industry to be part of solving the health equity problem.
For more on this incredible report, click here.
