Purdue University Announces Health Equity Expansion

On March 4, Purdue University announced an expansion of the university’s Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering (RCHE). According to the press release, “The center will enhance the mission first outlined when the Regenstrief Foundation established RCHE in 2005 by venturing outside conventional boundaries for healthcare research. It will use novel multidisciplinary studies that examine broad questions around health and well-being, and will emphasize delivering practical, implementable solutions directly to communities in keeping with the Purdue land-grant mission.”

The release states that “RCHE’s work is designed to accomplish key missions within four areas:

• Health Systems. Improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes by deploying sustainable solutions in health systems. This can be done by integrating Purdue’s excellence in engineering, modeling, artificial intelligence, human factors, organizational behavior and the social sciences.
• Population Health and Health Equity. Translate discovery and innovation into real-world solutions to improve population health and address the root causes of health inequities through meaningful community engagement.
• Health Data Science. Harness the power of health and healthcare data via Purdue’s strengths in computer science, statistics and mathematics to improve patients’ experiences, outcomes and population health.
• Health Education and Communication. Break down communication boundaries to translate innovative solutions that can improve everyone’s health and well-being.”

RCHE will study barriers to health equity and develop programs to address those obstacles to help communities overcome health inequities as part of its work to foster equal access to healthcare.

The release adds that through RCHE’s I-HOPE program the organization aims to reduce health disparities throughout the state—the program is in partnership with the Indiana Department of Health and more than 100 community partners. RCHE and collaborators plan on engaging over the next two years with 30 Indiana counties to improve local strengths and build networks to connect individuals with health services. The effort relies on the Purdue Healthcare Advisors and RCHE’s teams, as they will all work together to improve the quality, accessibility, equity, and affordability of healthcare delivery.

Dr. Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general, who now serves as Purdue’s first executive director of health equity initiatives, was quoted in the release saying that “This expansion of work in healthcare improvement is a very important step for Purdue and for the people of Indiana. RCHE will broaden and magnify valuable work already being done at Purdue to promote health equity. Until healthcare is consistently accessible, affordable and of high quality, these will be our goals. These goals are worthy challenges for the best minds, so this is the right challenge for Purdue, and this is the right approach.”