National Health IT Collaborative For The Underserved

Our overall vision is an empowered nation in which all residents enjoy optimal health status and care as a right.
In a democratic society, everyone has value and is entitled to the same access to health care and to opportunities to attain optimal health.
Health empowerment rests on the premise that every citizen must be engaged and included by way of processes that reach them where they are – from the "grass-roots" to the "tree-tops."
Appropriate education and outreach strategies, public policies, workforce development and training efforts, and finance and sustainability initiatives must be made available as essential tools -- along with health information technology -- in order to achieve improved health quality. These tools must benefit all.

All education and outreach activities, including planning, implementation, and evaluation-related, shall meet the following criteria:

Proactively engage diverse consumers (race/ethnicity, income, gender, etc.) and the providers who serve them;
Involve in all phases of activity the persons/communities to be informed and reached;
Assure cultural/linguistic relevance and appropriateness, reflecting knowledge of community values, history, statistics, trends, etc.;
Be geared to appropriate literacy and health literacy levels, using a variety of techniques and tools;
Adopt holistic approaches;
Aim for measurable individual and systems-related changes, not just the dissemination of information; and
Reflect a commitment to reciprocity and mutual respect so that education and outreach benefits those furnishing information and those receiving it.

Suggested principles include:

Policy formulation must be guided by a commitment to equity – "doing no harm" -- and assuring maximum benefits and a level playing field for all, not just the "majority."
Engaged stakeholders can build political will that makes enlightened policy-making possible.
Effective policy-making must reflect awareness that "one size does not fit all."
Policy formulation must be organic and adaptable to changing needs, circumstances, trends, and the availability of technical and financial resources.
The "acid test" of effective policies is the manner in which they are implemented or enforced through administrative regulations and rule-making.

Key principles may encompass:

Effective training requires respect for the learner and understanding of her/his actual/potential barriers to learning.
Selection, training, and performance evaluation should promote communication, collaboration, and the elimination of "silos."
The HIT workforce must reflect the diversity of the nation’s population.
Underserved communities represent a resource to tap with respect to HIT worker recruitment and training.
Workforce development and training should promote cross-fertilization and avoid over-specialization.
Workforce pipeline development should be accompanied by opportunities for upward mobility within and across organizations.
Workforce development and training should be data-driven.

It is in the nation’s interest to ensure the availability of private and public resources on a sustained basis to maximize HIT adoption in underserved communities.
There is a "business case" to be made for investing in HIT for underserved communities and the private sector must play a significant role in making that case.
Underserved communities will need substantial, long-term financial and technical assistance in order to maximize "returns on investment."
Funding decisions should foster collaboration, partnerships, and resource-sharing and should promote the inclusion in HIT planning, implementation, and evaluation of organizations that are representative and reflective of communities to be engaged.
HIT-related financial resources should promote entrepreneurship and community economic development to the greatest extent possible.