Our Work

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio has released a new toolkit designed to provide partners with information about how to use evaluation to move towards equity.

Each section of “Moving Toward Equity: An Evaluation Toolkit,” covers a different element of evaluation, including information on how to tie evaluation into every step of assessment, planning, implementation and continuous quality improvement processes.

“There is much still to be done to ensure Ohioans of color, LGBTQ+ Ohioans, Ohioans with disabilities, Ohioans with low incomes, Ohioans living in urban, rural and Appalachian areas, and others can thrive in our state,” the toolkit states.

For example, HPIO’s 2024 Health Value Dashboard shows that Black and Hispanic Ohio children are much more likely to experience food insecurity than their white peers (as displayed above).

“An important part of this work is to evaluate and measure if our efforts to achieve equity are successful,” the toolkit states. “Evaluation tells us if what we’re doing is making a difference. It gives us the information needed to understand where we need to change, refocus or intensify our approaches. Perhaps more importantly, evaluation is also a process that can build trust, collaboration and accountability.”

The toolkit includes guidance, tools and resources on:

• Setting the stage for evaluation through assessment and planning
• Equitable approaches to evaluation
• Developing an equitable evaluation plan
• Using evaluation results for continuous quality improvement
• Collecting data for evaluation

The Toolkit is for anyone who is dedicated to advancing equity, passionate about achieving results and committed to stewarding resources. Tools are located in a separate workbook that is meant to be interactive and fillable, and can be accessed on the publication page.

April is Minority Health Month and new analysis from data included in HPIO’s 2024 Health Value Dashboard shows that if disparities were eliminated in Ohio, Black Ohioans could collectively gain more than 60,000 years of life.

As illustrated above, because of disparities and inequities, Black Ohioans die prematurely at a rate 1.6 times greater than white Ohioans.

The Health Value Dashboard, released last week, includes equity profiles that explore gaps in outcomes among groups of Ohioans and analyze the barriers to health that contribute to these gaps. The profiles also include calculations for how many Ohioans would benefit if disparities were eliminated.

Last year HPIO released a first-of-its-kind analysis of the economic benefits of eliminating racial disparities in Ohio.

Earlier this week, HPIO released the sixth edition of the Health Value Dashboard, a tool to track Ohio’s progress toward health value — a composite measure of performance on population health outcomes and healthcare spending.

As illustrated above, the Dashboard found that Ohio ranks in the bottom quartile (44th) on health value compared to other states and D.C. That means that Ohioans continue to live less healthy lives and spend more on health care than people in most other states.

The Dashboard includes more than 100 data metrics on population health, healthcare spending and five additional areas that contribute to health value, plus profiles of groups of Ohioans who face discrimination and obstacles to health and well-being. It is designed for policymakers and other public- and private-sector leaders to examine Ohio’s performance relative to other states, track change over time and identify and explore health disparities and inequities in Ohio.

In analyzing Dashboard data, HPIO identified four policy priorities to improve health value:

• Mental well-being
• Tobacco and cannabis prevention
• Healthcare affordability
• Creating opportunities to thrive