Focus on DHE&I: Diversity, Health Equity, and Inclusion Best Practices Webinar Series

Advancing Equity Through Quality and Safety

Wednesday, July 13, 2022 | 12-12:45 p.m.

As part of its commitment to champion diversity, health equity, and inclusion, the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association (MHA), and the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) Massachusetts Chapter have partnered to develop a series of webinars that encourage dialogue and share best practices.

Join us for a lunchtime webinar as expert faculty Dr. Karthik Sivashanker, Vice President of Equitable Health Systems in the Center for Health Equity at the American Medical Association, shares how to leverage patient-safety programs to advance equity in health systems and practices, and design and implement interventions that support equity. This session will address how existing infrastructure and technologies to measure, monitor, and improve quality and safety can also be used to create a fairer system for patients.

Presenter:
Karthik Sivashanker, MD
VP & Medical Director
Brigham and Women's Hospital

Dr. Karthik Sivashanker is the Vice President of Equitable Health Systems in the Center for Health Equity at the American Medical Association, and a Medical Director in Quality, Safety, and Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is a psychiatrist at Justice Resource Institute. Dr. Sivashanker attended college and medical school at Northwestern University in Illinois. He completed psychiatry residency at NYP Weill Cornell in New York and a psychosomatic medicine fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is a graduate of the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality and received a Master’s in Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

As a former Fulbright scholar, he conducted research in Venezuela on the vertical transmission of HIV/AIDS in rural mountain communities. As a former VA Under Secretary for Health Diffusion of Excellence Gold Fellow, he led efforts to standardize and improve the process of substance use screening and triage for veterans. His work has focused on driving racial justice and equity in the healthcare arena by leveraging high-performance quality and safety practices to systematically make inequities visible and to address and resolve them as an integral part of health care delivery.