The time is now: Addressing health inequities in the workforce

As a major provider of health insurance for working-age Americans, employers can play a significant role in improving the health equity of their employees and family members. In this commentary, we describe how different stakeholders, including employers, their employees, clinicians, and health systems and health plans, each contribute to the observed inequities. Other systems-level factors, including racism, implicit bias, medical mistrust, health literacy limitations, and health care access and affordability concerns have been also shown to contribute to inequitable outcomes. Opportunities exist for employers to improve health equity among their benefits-enrolled employees and family members using data-driven approaches to ensure that benefits are more equitable in scope, access, and affordability. As an illustrative example of employer strategic considerations, we describe opportunities to identify and address inequities in prescription medication use. Additionally, employers can, and perhaps should, advocate for transparency in community-based health system and health plan reporting regarding health inequities and progress toward more equitable health care utilization and outcomes. Employers can also advocate for the delivery of more patient-centered, systems-based solutions, such as enhanced primary care and/or worksite clinics, and give consideration to establishing health equity performance-based incentives in their health care contracting. Further research in the employer setting can help to expand the adoption of a best-practices approach to achieving more equitable health outcomes.