Ellen Kelsay is the president and CEO of Business Group on Health (BGH), a global organization helping employers connect, solve problems, and provide excellent care. BGH leads in innovation and action to address the delivery, affordability, and experience with the health care system.

Shantanu Nundy, MD, MBA, is the chief medical officer for Accolade, whose “Personalized Healthcare” approach helps people live healthy lives through navigation, delivery, and advocacy services. He is also a member of the AMA External Equity & Innovation Advisory Group.

Together, BGH and Accolade have worked together to advance their shared missions of health equity in innovation — and Ellen and Shantanu brought that passion to the ground floor of the In Full Health Initiative as a founding collaborator and advisory board member, respectively.

Here, they come together for a conversation about the work they’re doing, the partnerships they’re building, and what they hope to see achieved.

In Full Health (IFH): BGH and Accolade have worked together in the health equity space for quite some time — how would you describe this partnership?

Ellen Kelsay: Accolade has long been a leader in the field of advocacy and employee navigation, helping individuals access the right services, and helping them navigate through very challenging experiences.

As a BGH member, in addition to the professional affiliation of that partnership, we have very strong relationships with Accolade at many levels within our organizations. That spirit of partnership and collaboration has been in place for many years and on many fronts, in particular as it relates to health equity and the In Full Health initiative.

Dr. Shantanu Nundy: For us, BGH is a thought leader and a convener in our space that is improving health and health care for employers. We look at BGH as a sort of leading organization, and the things that they do — whether centered on health equity or not — are things that we pay attention to. We know that if they’re focusing on something, it means that’s the direction the market’s moving.

Ellen Kelsay: Health equity — as Dr. Nundy mentioned — is core to our work at both BGH and Accolade. It is not a new priority, although it has certainly been magnified in recent years. Health equity is very core to who we are, it is only growing in importance, and collectively we must continue to recognize how much more work there is yet to do. Strong connections in this space help us do it.

Expressing Gratitude

Our employer members and their partners are doing hard work every day to address the health and well-being of the workforce, particularly when it comes to health equity. My team and I are proud to work in partnership with them on such critically important issues.

Ellen Kelsay
President and CEO, Business Group on Health

IFH: Both BGH and Accolade have shown a strong commitment to equity in health innovation. Why is this commitment important — and what comes next?

Ellen Kelsay: Health equity is something that affects all of us in every way — some more acutely than others. We all have a role to play, and we all need to be cognizant and aware of the challenges that our friends and coworkers may experience that are tenfold to the challenges that we experience ourselves. It starts with an awareness, that leads to empathy, that leads to action. There’s an organizational responsibility and commitment that we all have to actively participate in.

Dr. Shantanu Nundy: To build on this, that initial commitment is critical, but it’s also the starting point. A commitment might be saying, “Health equity matters.” And that’s important, but the commitment has to go further than that into specific targets or metrics that you’re trying to hit. Or the specific amounts of funding or resources that you’re committing to solving the problem. The commitment is really to say that we’re going to look at health equity first, not last or not “not at all.” I think that’s really the next level of where we need to go.

IFH: Why did BGH choose to be a founding collaborator for the In Full Health initiative?

Ellen Kelsay: BGH chose to be a founding collaborator of the In Full Health initiative in part because its vision aligns so strongly with our own work.

The In Full Health initiative allows us to help champion that work — but also to ink arms with other partners who are also championing and working hard on those issues. It’s supportive and very synergistic with the work that we’ve been doing. When I think about us, and Accolade, and other leaders being a part of the In Full Health initiative, it’s not necessarily about any one of our organizations. It’s about using the collective weight and leverage of our organizations to influence and have an impact on others.

Community Connections

When it comes to other people doing the work, one leader to mention is the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and specifically their CEO, Kedar Mate. They’ve long looked at health care as a systems problem. They’ve also long looked at equity as a core part of what systems have to do. They’re really a north star for a lot of health care organizations looking to improve health equity meaningfully.

Dr. Shantanu Nundy, MD, MBA
Chief Medical Officer, Accolade

IFH: What change do you hope to see as a result of the In Full Health initiative — and in your own respective organizations?

Ellen Kelsay: The first thing that I hope to see out of the In Full Health initiative is simply the number of people who are collaborating on this issue of health equity and the variety of the perspectives and the influence we have. The spirit of collaboration is intangible. That spirit is what then leads to outcomes that we can more tangibly measure.

Dr. Shantanu Nundy: Exactly — I think the most observable change is that you start to see the data coming out of health care organizations reflecting this commitment to health equity. I think we still are in a world where organizations will say, “Oh, here are our diabetes outcomes.” Then separately, they’ll say, “And here’s our commitment to health equity.” It’s critical to see that those two things are tied together. I hope we see that the way that health care organizations talk about their outcomes speak directly to how we go about achieving health equity.

Ellen Kelsay: Those tangible changes and outcomes are going to be things like seeing a shift in the innovative solutions that come forward, the solutions that get funded, and solutions that meet the needs of diverse populations. From this, we can also hope to see an improvement in health outcomes and a decrease in health inequities. There’s so much promise and opportunity and work to do that’s ahead for all of us.