Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
CHERP Research and Accomplishments
Improving blood pressure control and reducing racial disparities in blood pressure control for Veterans
Measuring Improvement in Treatment of Hypertension
In response to the call for an action plan to improve blood pressure control and reduce racial disparities in blood pressure control for Veterans with hypertension, CHERP investigators created a novel Health Equity Dashboard (HED) to support rapid implementation of quality improvement in 10 VA medical centers in the regional network, VISN4. Led by Principal Investigator Leslie Hausmann, PhD, the CHERP team compared 19 VA performance measures across VISN4 and found significant racial disparities in blood pressure control among hypertensive patients in VA care settings. While 81% of white Veterans achieved blood pressure control under VA care, 71% of black Veterans reached that goal in the same facilities. Data analysis also showed that larger proportions of blacks had uncontrolled blood pressure compared to whites at the VISN4 facilities, with racial differences in control ranging from 2.9% to 14.6% lower in blacks.
Each VISN4 facility is currently developing and implementing an action plans to improve care, using the Health Equity Dashboard to measure success. Now CHERP investigators are partnering with the VA Office of Health Equity (OHE) to continue to evaluate the progress of this initiative and inform future VA-wide efforts to improve the quality and equity of health care for Veterans with hypertension and other common medical conditions.
Leslie Hausmann, PhD, PI; Michael Fine, MD, MSc, Co-I, Maria Mor, PhD, Co-I . Identifying and Understanding Facility-Level Variation in Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Inpatient Healthcare Experiences.
