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About Us

National Program Office Staff
From left to right—Front Row: Amy Badler, Olivia Roanhorse, Chesareé Rollins, Hui Tang; Back Row: Amy Walters, Marshall Chin, Scott Cook, Nicole Keesecker
Not pictured: Priya John, Kimberly King, Marika Sam, Anusha Vable, Morgen Alexander-Young
In 2005, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched a new national program at the University of Chicago, Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, to award and manage research grants totaling $6 million to healthcare organizations implementing interventions aimed at reducing disparities. The funds are used to evaluate the interventions and their potential for broad dissemination. With this pool of funds, project leaders hope that health plans, hospitals, and community clinics will be encouraged to focus on racial and ethnic disparities as a priority in their quality improvement agendas.
Led by Marshall H. Chin, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, co-director of General Internal Medicine Research, the team will also inform the field about best practices with respect to quality improvement strategies specifically targeted at minority patients. Finding Answers focuses on evaluating interventions in treatment areas where the evidence of racial and ethnic disparities is strong and the recommended standard of care is clear.
Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change seeks to improve the quality of health care provided to patients from racial and ethnic backgrounds likely to experience disparities and will:
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Grant funds to discover and evaluate practical and replicable solutions designed to reduce and eliminate racial and ethnic health care disparities.
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Conduct systematic reviews of existing published and unpublished literature regarding racial and ethnic health care disparities interventions.
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Disseminate results from the research efforts and the systematic reviews to encourage health care systems to address racial and ethnic gaps in care. |