Included in the toolkit are five steps, which are summarized below:

1. Leadership must step up and commit to taking meaningful action. The toolkit includes a two-phase path for hospitals and health systems to transform organizational equity goals.

2. Traditional organizational approaches to equity can be transformed by a commitment to learning. Better understanding racism in medicine is crucial to gaining a new perspective, and the toolkit includes tips for individual and group learning sessions to explore knowledge gaps regarding health equity, racial equity, racism, and anti-racism.

3. Enterprise-wide data can illuminate inequities. Data can uncover racial inequities at both the patient- and community-levels. The toolkit includes a framework for using institutional data to improve health equity initiatives.

4. A clear path toward achieving health equity goals is needed to earn buy-in from the entire health system and community. Within the AMA’s tookit is a roadmap for piloting what’s termed a “SMART” project, using specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals.

5. Targeted quality improvement efforts should be undertaken across the health system to advance racial justice and health equity. The toolkit provides vanguard examples of health system-based initiatives to achieve these goals.

In the prepared statement, the AMA said that the toolkit represents the newest addition to a collection of more than 70 other toolkits that cover transformative medical practice solutions in areas including: practice efficiency, patient care, patient health, technology, and innovation. 

Download the tookit here.