About this Self-Paced Training

Your Guide to NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation Programs

Your Guide to NCQA's Health Equity Accreditation programs is a guide to help health systems, health plans and other care organizations advance health equity. 

Health Equity Accreditation focuses on the foundation of health equity work: building an internal culture that supports the organization’s external health equity work; collecting data that help the organization create and offer language services and provider networks mindful of individuals’ cultural and linguistic needs; identifying opportunities to reduce health inequities and improve care. Health Equity Accreditation Plus helps health care organizations that have implemented core health equity activities establish processes and cross-sector partnerships that identify and address social risk factors in their communities and the social needs of the people they serve. 

This self-paced course provides a deep dive, standard-by-standard review of program requirements. Faculty provide insight into required evidence, navigating the standards and avoiding pitfalls. This course highlights how Health Equity Accreditation Plus builds on the foundation of Health Equity Accreditation to support organizations that are more advanced and have an ongoing commitment to health equity. A demonstration of the Gap Analysis Tool is featured that provides a robust solution for organizations to evaluate their compliance with NCQA’s accreditation standards, identify areas for improvement, and determine survey readiness. In addition, the survey readiness process is outlined which helps to ensure an organization’s successful survey for NCQA Health Equity Accreditation.

What You Will Learn

At the conclusion of this course, participants will be able to:

- Become familiar with NCQA Health Equity Accreditation program standards that help payers, care delivery providers and other health care organizations to individually—and collaboratively—work to address inequalities. 

- Learn to navigate the Gap Analysis Tool critical to a successful NCQA survey.

- Identify the steps to NCQA’s survey readiness process. 

·    - Recognize key changes for the 2024 standards and guidelines.

Who Should Attend

• Health plans
• Health systems
• Hospitals
• Accountable  care Orgs
• Providers
• Managed behavioral healthcare organizations
• Population health organizations
• Wellness organizations
• Leveragers in the federal government, states and employers

Faculty

 

Jasmine Ashby, MGHD, BS

Jasmine Ashby is currently Manager of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and Employee Engagement at the National Committee of Quality of Assurance. In this position, Jasmine supports DEI and Employee Engagement efforts. This includes serving as chair of NCQA’s DEI Council and as liaison to NCQA’s four Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). The DEI Council helps hold NCQA accountable to its DEI mission, facilitates DEI trainings and Heritage/Cultural events and implements NCQA Community Engagement/Volunteering initiatives. The four Employee Resource – Black/African American, LGBTQ+, Parents in Community and Latine/Hispanic - serve as sounding boards for strategic diversity and inclusion initiatives, and a support system that offers employees a sense of community, camaraderie and connection to the organization. Jasmine supports the management of each ERG and any programming implemented by each group.

 To support Employee engagement efforts, Jasmine administrators NCQA’s annual engagement and DEI survey. Following the completion of the survey, Jasmine supports organization wide review of survey results and action planning to improve employee engagement and the employee experience. Action planning occurs on both the organizational level – with an Engagement and DEI Action plan – and departmental level action planning. Jasmine facilitates departmental focus groups to review results and develop strategies to address concerns within each department. Jasmine also holds the departments and the organization accountable for implementing their action plans and keeping employees informed on engagement efforts.

 Jasmine earned her Master in Global Human Development from Georgetown University and has Bachelor of Science degrees in International Development and Economics from The Ohio State University.

 

Portia Buchongo, PhD, MPH, BSN, RN

Portia Buchongo is formerly an Applied Research Scientist for Health Equity at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) where she led federal, and foundation funded projects focused on generating new evidence to inform programmatic and policy strategies to advance health equity. Her current work examined approaches to measuring equitable high quality health care, effective cross-sector partnerships, and disparities in chronic conditions.

 Prior to joining NCQA, Dr. Buchongo conducted research that examined the impact of neighborhood deprivation on access to the diabetes prevention program. Dr. Buchongo has over 10 years of experience serving populations with complex health care needs in her work as a critical care registered nurse and public health practitioner. Dr. Buchongo is a former NCQA Phyllis Torda Health Care Quality and Equity Fellow, has been a Fellow with the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, and CDC Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Fellow.

 Dr. Buchongo earned her PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Maryland School of Public Health, holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Virginia Commonwealth University.

 

 

Amelia Bedri

Amelia Bedri has been with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for over two years and is currently a Senior Content Engineer in Product Development. In this position, Ms. Bedri organizes the direction, structure and delivery of NCQA’s 11 Accreditation and Certification Standards and Guidelines, from concept to launch. Ms. Bedri has led the development cycle for NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation and Long-Term Services and Supports Accreditation programs and acts as the internal and external subject matter expert for the product.

Prior to joining NCQA, Ms. Bedri worked as the lead researcher for MedStar Health Corporation in Washington, DC, in the development of their community health needs assessment. Her experience in the health care industry ranges from a variety of settings including complex care delivery systems, managed care, home and community-based services and consulting for a life sciences start-up and state health department. Ms. Bedri earned an MS in Health Systems Administration from Georgetown University with summa cum laude.

 

Rachel Harrington, PhD

Rachel Harrington, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), where she leads organizational efforts to build an evidence base to advance equitable, high quality, health care. This includes methods to promote transparency, incentivize reduction of inequities and develop equitable systems of care. In this role she directs the Equity in HEDIS program and research on novel approaches to measuring health equity, including data considerations and methods to evaluate disparities in quality performance.
Dr, Harrington has also done extensive work in the areas of risk adjusted utilization, appropriate medication use, and patient engagement in research. Before joining NCQA, she was a fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Health Research and Policy. Prior to that, she spent over 10 years in the pharmaceutical industry, with roles in regulatory affairs and health economics. Dr. Harrington holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacy Systems, Outcomes and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

Sonia Frazier

Sonia Frazier has over 20 years’ experience within healthcare including as Director at a large Medicaid plan, consultant and as Manager/Senior Accreditation Manager at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). She has been an NCQA Surveyor since 2012.  Her expertise is in guiding organizations through NCQA accreditation and certification preparation and supporting corporate clients and complex organizations. She currently serves as a subject matter expert (SME) on Multi-Cultural Health Care and the Health Equity Accreditation.

 Prior to consulting, Sonia was the Senior Accreditation Manager at NCQA, where in addition to her responsibilities as an Accreditation Manager/Accreditation Survey Coordinator (ASC), she was responsible for managing several of NCQA’s corporate customers.  Before joining NCQA, she was the Director for the second largest Medicaid plan in the Philadelphia market for seven years, where she was responsible for accreditation, HEDIS roadmap and audit preparation, disease and case management, quality credentialing auditing, EPSDT, and the high medical needs program.  The organization had several other product lines, including Medicare, Adult Basic and SCHIP products.  In 2011, she led the organization in obtaining the nation’s first health plan to be awarded NCQA’s Multicultural HealthCare Distinction (now Health Equity Accreditation).

With her background in various programs, Sonia moved to NCQA in 2012 as an Accreditation Manager and was later promoted in 2017 to Senior Accreditation Manager.  After joining NCQA, Sonia facilitated the accreditation and certification processes and surveyed organizations for Health Plan Accreditation, Credentialing Verification Organization, Multicultural HealthCare, Case Management, Disease Management, and Wellness and Health Promotion surveys.  Following her promotion in 2017, she managed several of NCQA’s corporate customers, providing survey support, ensuring that corporate policy issues were addressed, and ensuring inter-rater reliability across all corporate surveys.

 Sonia holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh.  Sonia also received her Certification in HealthCare Quality (CPHQ) in 2020.  She currently resides in Dixon, IL with her husband, two sons, and dog.

 

Meghan Monahan, JD

Meghan Monahan is currently an Accreditation Policy Manager at the National Committee for Quality Assurance. Ms. Monahan serves as the policy co-lead for the Health Equity Accreditation and Health Equity Accreditation Plus products and is a member of NCQA’s Health Equity Agile Team. In this capacity, Ms. Monahan

is the policy and content expert for NCQA’s health equity products and is responsible for maintaining and updating these products during NCQA’s development cycles. Ms. Monahan is also responsible for providing policy clarification support on content-related issues for internal and external customers.

 Prior to joining NCQA, Ms. Monahan has worked in both the public and private sectors monitoring and analyzing health care policy at the state and federal level with a particular interest in health equity issues. Ms. Monahan earned her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law in 2017 and is licensed to practice law in Maryland.

 

Liz Ryder

Liz Ryder (she/her) is Assistant Director, Product Management at NCQA. In this role, she leads NCQA’s cross-functional team tasked with identifying opportunities to embed expectations for health equity into all NCQA programs and pursuing new opportunities to advance health equity amid a rapidly evolving health care landscape.

 

Zoya Shabbir, MHA, CCMP

Zoya Shabbir is currently Assistant Director, Product Implementation and Operations at the National Committee for Quality Assurance.  In this position, Ms. Shabbir leads implementation and operations of new NCQA programs such as Health Equity Accreditation and Health Equity Accreditation PLUS and continues to improve operational efficiencies for internal and external NCQA staff, customers, and surveyors. This includes accreditation system platform updates and enhancements as well as improving the end-to-end accreditation survey process.

Ms. Shabbir also continues to support accreditation surveys of managed care and care delivery organizations.  Prior to selection as the Assistant Director, Product Implementation and Operations, Ms. Shabbir was a Senior Accreditation Manager with NCQA.  In this position, she managed a team of accreditation managers and the report process in addition to performing surveys.

 Prior to joining the accreditation team, Ms. Shabbir worked in NCQA’s Information Products team managing the Quality Compass product.

Ms. Shabbir earned her MHA from George Mason University and is a ProSci certified Change Management Practitioner.

 

Continuing Education

This is a non AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM, ANA CNE, ACPE activity.

DISCLOSURE OF RELEVANT FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) endorses the Standards of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education which specify that sponsors of continuing medical education activities and presenters at and planners for these activities disclose any relevant financial relationships either party might have with commercial companies whose products or services are discussed in educational presentations.

For sponsors, relevant financial relationships include large research grants, institutional agreements for joint initiatives, substantial gifts, or other relationships that benefit the institution.  For presenters or planning committee members, relevant financial relationships include the receipt of research grants from a commercial company, consultancies, honoraria, travel, or other benefits, or having a self-managed equity interest in a company; or having an immediate family member or partner with such a relationship.

Disclosure of a relationship is not intended to suggest or condone bias in any presentation but is made to provide participants with information that might be of potential importance to their evaluation of a presentation.

Relevant financial relationships exist with the following companies/organizations:

Faculty:
Jasmine Ashby: None
Portia Buchongo: None
Amelia Bedri: None
Rachel Harrington: None
Sonia Frazier: None
Meghan Monahan: None
Liz Ryder: None
Zoya Shabbir: None

Additional Planning Committee Member:
Crissy Crittenden: None
Hannah Yousefian: None

This program received no commercial support.

Info

• Time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada)
• Style: Self-paced
• Modules:  1
• Time:  5 hours, 20 minutes
• Navigation: The course includes 18 topics and allows users to skip ahead and navigate backward to any section. (NOTE: You do not have to view the entire recording in order to navigate between sections.)
• Certificate of Participation awarded