The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) has published an online resource designed to provide easy access to interventions that improve minority health and reduce health disparities.
The HDPulse Interventions Portal features a study led by UNC Lineberger’s Samuel Cykert, MD, that demonstrated that a system-based approach to optimizing care profoundly narrowed Black-white disparities in cancer treatment and markedly improved care for everyone. The portal has 24 evidence-based interventions that address a range of diseases and health conditions.
Cykert and Eugenia Eng, PhD, now professor emerita of health behavior at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and a former UNC Lineberger member, and their colleagues with the Greensboro (North Carolina) Health Disparities Collaborative led the ACCURE Pragmatic Quality Improvement trial, which demonstrated a system-based intervention within cancer treatment centers can reduce and eliminate disparities in treatment and outcomes for black patients with early-stage lung and breast cancer.
“After decades of scrutiny and hundreds of papers outlining health care disparities, studies documenting interventions mitigating these disparities have been exceedingly rare,” said Cykert, a professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine. “Therefore, it’s deeply significant that the NIH and NIMHD have created this website to showcase evidence-based, successful interventions. Our multi-faceted approach not only helped close the gap in cancer treatment disparities but also demonstrated markedly improved care for all patients with curable lung cancer.”
Cykert said this system-based approach for cancer care should be implemented now essentially at every cancer center, as well as be used to improve the management of preventive care for other chronic diseases.