Health equity has become a prominent topic in the life sciences. While its significance has long been recognized in policy making and population health management, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are now adopting more “outcome-focused portfolio strategies” to maximize access and delivery of care. Recent evidence highlights that social drivers of health (SDOH) play a more substantial role in patient outcomes than medical care and genetics alone. As a result, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly integrating health equity strategies into their operational planning to enhance access to medications and improve patient outcomes.
Many life sciences companies have generated insights and quantified health equity gaps. These insights help them focus their efforts to advance health equity. But most companies still don’t have a threshold for what “good” looks like and are struggling to establish consistent benchmarks. ZS has developed a Health Inequity Treatment Index (HITI) to define a consistent methodology for quantifying inequities in treatment across various therapy areas to help set tangible and practical health equity goals for life sciences companies.
The HITI incorporates the following nuances:
- Therapy area and product class specificity: It’s tailored to specific therapy areas and product classes, providing life sciences companies with a clear view of care inequities within their own domains.
- Comparability across diseases and drug classes: It ensures comparability across different diseases and drug classes, helping life sciences companies understand how equitable their treatment is relative to other drug classes and therapy areas.
- Geographical differentiation: It includes differentiation by geographies, enabling life sciences companies to develop highly targeted strategies.
This approach aims to help life sciences companies establish a benchmark for equitable care and create actionable plans to address treatment inequities. Our white paper describes how it was developed, why the HITI is different from other health equity indices and what the life sciences can learn from it.
To learn more about the HITI, contact us.
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