Giving Compass' Take:
- Teta Alim interviews Dr. Amaka Eneanya as she shares lessons on innovating for health equity, emphasizing the need for health equity education and ethical AI utilization.
- How can health care organizations effectively balance innovation, equity, and resource constraints to improve patient and clinician outcomes?
- Learn more about key issues in health and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on health in your area.
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Most healthcare organizations innovating for health equity regularly prioritize goals to improve the patient experience and increase clinician satisfaction, aligning with the Quintuple Aim.
Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare created the role of chief transformation officer to focus on these areas, and in July 2023, Dr. Amaka Eneanya became the first to fill the role.
She is especially engaged in improving the organization’s approach to innovating for health equity. Her previous work as a nephrologist includes landmark research that has influenced updating standards to remove race as a variable for the kidney function algorithm known as eGFR, or estimated glomerular filtration rate.
“My favorite question is, why not? If you get complacent, that's where we see stagnation and maybe even a decrement in either clinician or patient outcomes. So, organizations should be continuously iterating,” she tells HealthTech.
Eneanya talks about what she’s learned from her first year as chief transformation officer, the importance of education in promoting health equity and key considerations for deploying artificial intelligence.
HEALTHTECH: What would you say were the top three lessons you learned during the first year in your new role innovating for health equity?
ENEANYA: It's been a great year. For lesson one, as someone coming from a different part of the U.S., ingraining yourself and getting to know the people and the culture of the organization that you’re in, that’s important to determine the change readiness of an organization. You can't necessarily apply your previous experiences as a one-size-fits-all to your new role. So, really learning about Emory Healthcare, learning about Atlanta, learning about the history of Georgia, the political climate — that was an important lesson.
The second lesson is that change is exciting. There's a lot of trepidation with change, and part of being effective with change management and transformation is really garnering excitement. If you are exuding any type of apprehension, that will spread like wildfire.
Read the full article about innovating for health equity by Teta Alim at HealthTech Magazine.