Health Equity

Since its creation over a decade ago, the CMS Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) has led efforts across the agency to advance health equity, shaping program policies and producing tools and research that improve health and health care, with a focus on communities and individuals who are underserved. As an update to the previous Medicare-focused CMS Equity Plan to Improve Quality in Medicare,10 CMS OMH, in collaboration with other CMS Centers and Offices, has launched an enhanced and more comprehensive 10-year approach to further embed health equity within all CMS programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the Health Insurance Marketplace®: the CMS Framework for Health Equity.

The CMS Framework for Health Equity aligns with the federal government’s goal of advancing equity, which is to provide everyone with the opportunity to reach their full potential.2 Consistent with this aim, the CMS Framework for Health Equity supports CMS’s ability to assess whether, and to what extent, its programs and policies perpetuate or exacerbate systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits for the communities referenced above. This includes understanding and addressing the ways in which Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the Health Insurance Marketplace® meet the needs of those we serve, particularly communities and individuals who have been historically underserved.

This white paper supports the CMS Framework for Health Equity’s priorities by outlining how CMS intends to expand the collection, reporting, and analysis of standardized data and use of health equity data to achieve its equity goals. We provide an overview of the current status of health equity data in CMS programs, along with challenges encountered, define actions that CMS has already undertaken, and describe future plans to continue to address challenges in health equity data.