- 13 -
accessHealthNews.net
Special Issue 2025
Volume 12 | Issue No. 101
The Kansas City Health Equity Learning
and Action Network (the LAN), under
the leadership of the Health Forward
Foundation and in partnership with the
Institute for Healthcare Improvement
(IHI), and the KC Health Collaborative
(KCHC), actively develops comprehensive
strategies and action plans to dismantle
medically racist systems that circumvent
optimal health and perpetuate health
inequities for people of color.
Health Forward's purpose is to support
and build inclusive, powerful, and healthy
communities characterized by racial
equity and economically just systems.
IHI has spent more than two decades
leveraging improvement science to
advance and sustain health outcomes in
health and health care globally.
KCHC is a multi-stakeholder, nonprofit,
community organization that works to
catalyze meaningful health and health
care delivery improvements to position
Kansas City as a national leader in health,
well-being, and economic vitality.
Collectively, these organizations
established the LAN which convenes
the region's health ecosystem including
federally qualified health centers (FQHCs),
community based health clinics, health
systems, physicians, payers, employers,
public health departments, and
community based organizations.
With more than 50 organizations
participating, the LAN provides a forum for
engagement, girded by a shared agenda,
with education, training, tools, and
expertise to markedly change systems,
policies, and structures. The goal is to
eliminate disparities in health care delivery,
while realizing measurable improvements
steeped in equity-centered, culturally
responsive health outcomes for all health
care consumers.
The group's mission aligns with a long list of
health care sojourners who saw the bough
break more than a century ago and who
dared to buck structures designed to
perpetuate health disparities, inequities,
and injustices for Black and Brown people.
Now the LAN is on the frontline battling
medically racist structures that have
managed to persist since the early framing
of Kansas City's health care system.
Read more
