Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Approaches to Reducing Health Care Disparities: A Focus on Six Multi-Stakeholder Alliances

In 2006, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) – its signature effort to improve the quality of health care in targeted communities across the nation.1 Reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care was one of the key objectives of the AF4Q initiative. In this summary, we describe the major activities aimed at reducing disparities in care implemented across six AF4Q communities: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Cleveland, Ohio; Humboldt County, California; Memphis, Tennessee; Maine, and Washington State. These diverse communities represent a range of geographic and demographic characteristics including U.S. region, population size, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Table 1). The different approaches to reducing health care disparities undertaken by these AF4Q alliances may serve as models for other communities.