2026 Encoding Health Equity Summit - Panel Discussion: Bridging the Gap: Research Strategies for Advancing Health Equity in a Changing Landscape-Panel Discussion: Bridging the Gap: Research Strategies for Advancing Health Equity in a Changing Landscape

Panel Discussion: Bridging the Gap: Research Strategies for Advancing Health Equity in a Changing Landscape

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Video Summary

The panel discussed research strategies to advance health equity in changing environments, focusing on how race and other variables are used in clinical prediction models and guidelines. Jennifer Lynn emphasized that guideline developers should assess fairness by understanding background inequities, clinical decision context, model limitations, implementation thresholds, and post-deployment monitoring. She used cardiovascular risk tools like PREVENT to show that better calibration does not always change clinical decisions, and that policy and access gaps also drive disparities.<br /><br />Felicity advocated for “population-conscious analysis,” a research approach that avoids adding race by default. Instead, researchers should first model other drivers of inequity, then test whether race still adds meaningful information. She argued journals and editorial checklists could speed change more than retraining researchers alone.<br /><br />Sean described the move in pulmonary medicine away from race-based spirometry interpretation, using the example of GLI Global and recent efforts to remove race from lung function equations. He stressed that thresholds can have real consequences, such as on insurance, and that implementation in under-resourced settings remains difficult.<br /><br />Across the discussion, panelists highlighted the need for inclusive data, better measurement of social stressors, stronger community engagement, international learning, and careful attention to the clinical and policy impacts of equity-focused research.

Keywords

health equity

clinical prediction models

race in medicine

population-conscious analysis

guideline development

spirometry

community engagement

policy disparities