Atlanta-based Morehouse School of Medicine was founded to diversify the scientific community and health and healthcare workforce. In its pursuit of health justice, MSM developed a successful model for co-creating health equity solutions tailored to the communities being served. MSM’s health equity model has been adopted by many companies and academic health centers seeking to improve health and wellness outcomes.
In June of 2020, when the nation was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health awarded MSM a $40 million grant to fight COVID-19 in racial, ethnic, and rural communities that were disproportionately impacted.
MSM turned to KPMG for help in envisioning and creating what would become the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network (NCRN). Built at speed and completed in just 90 days, this powerful, connected health platform enabled MSM to:
• Gather data from public and private sources on healthcare discrepancies, attitudes toward government intervention, food insecurity, internet access, and more
• Use machine learning and other advanced analytical capabilities to generate insights in under-resourced communities
• Accurately predict the impact of COVID-19 on specific communities
• Launch a portal that effectively engaged underserved users in their health by providing trusted information, and letting users search locally for COVID-19 testing and vaccines
• Partner with highly trusted organizations such as nonprofits, academic institutions, health centers, hospitals, and faith-based institutions to disseminate accurate, timely information.
The success of this effort was a catalyst for Morehouse School of Medicine. Leadership began asking how they could scale the school’s learnings and innovations to benefit communities across the world.
Having already worked closely with KPMG, MSM had a trusted advisor with a global infrastructure of its own. So together, they planned to move as quickly as possible to expand Morehouse School of Medicine’s role as a global voice for health equity.
A powerful COVID-19 response platform becomes a launch pad for greater global health equity ambitions
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Morehouse School of Medicine now has a clear vision for its unique role in achieving global health equity. It has prioritized key initiatives that align with the school’s strengths and resources, and that could prove to be powerful tools and/or enablers in closing the health gap. The school is embarking on a transformation of its finance function leading to improved management of investments and grants as well as more accurate forecasting. A clearer financial picture and fewer manual tasks free up more resources to support the school’s greater ambitions.
MSM has already made strides in modernizing its telehealth and data and analytics capabilities, back-office operating models, and talent and culture strategies to better support its growing role on the global stage. The changes made were based on deep insights into everything from precision medicine and the healthcare industry, to the trends and disruptions impacting how patient care is delivered.
Changes of this scale can take any kind of organization years to complete. Working together with KPMG, Morehouse School of Medicine made rapid progress in just 12 months. MSM now has the vision, capabilities, and detailed plans for a number of key initiatives, including:
• Investing capital and resources in the modernization of the back office, starting with finance, aligned to the priorities of the chief financial officer and leadership team
• Engaging trusted, community-based organizations in regions across the globe as partners in promoting health
• Taking the successful telehealth programs the school currently provides in the US (which have an adoption rate of more than 90 percent) and tailoring them to other countries
• Establishing the MSM Health Equity Incubator, a means of accelerating the creation and launch of innovations that address health disparities • Holding The First Annual Morehouse School of Medicine Global Health Equity Summit, where esteemed speakers from across the globe will address topics ranging from genomic equality to artificial intelligence.
A clear vision of greater global health equity and a detailed roadmap for getting there
We can’t know when or how the next pandemic will arrive, or what groundbreaking medical advances will need to reach people in racial, ethnic, and rural communities that are traditionally underserved. What we do know is that connected health is key in rising to meet global healthcare challenges and to achieving health equity.
Though built to address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Morehouse School of Medicine’s NCRN connected health platform has the flexibility to serve as a powerful resource for any crisis from a flu outbreak to a natural disaster.
Leadership has already solidified a vision, design principles, and refined use cases for a connected campus that will further the school’s ability to innovate and educate in the area of health equity.
Combine technology with the school’s unwavering commitment to health equity and its ongoing modernization of key capabilities, and you have a formidable champion of health equity whatever the future may bring.
Continuing to close the health gap and standing ready for the next health crisis
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