Given the new state requirements and the resulting proliferation of CHEO positions, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) in 2023 commissioned PHC to explore the responsibilities, priorities and experiences of the nascent CHEO role and investigate the contexts where these roles were being implemented. PHC conducted a landscape analysis that included a quantitative survey (N=22) of CHEOs and qualitative interviews (N=15) with separately recruited individuals in these roles throughout California. Respondents for both the qualitative interviews and the quantitative survey worked for health plans, health systems, hospitals, clinics, public agencies and academic medical centers.
The results of this landscape analysis offer a valuable snapshot of the characteristics of those who assumed senior health equity roles in health care organizations in California and provide insight into the development and implementation of the infrastructure and partnerships necessary to identify, target and ameliorate health disparities. Because disparities in health and health care are caused by complex, long-standing and, in some cases, seemingly intractable individual and system-level factors, efforts to advance health equity have not been without significant challenges.
The results reported here illuminate some of the challenges to health equity and provide insight into the characteristics of CHEOs and their organizations, their available resources, the context within which they are attempting to address disparities, what they believe are the facilitators and/or barriers to success, and some examples of the preliminary initiatives they have pursued so far. (author introduction)