UnitedHealth Group Continues Health Equity Initiatives

We established an innovative, community-based care model to provide COVID-19 testing, education and other necessary services to some of the highest-risk and most underserved communities in the country. By focusing on locations hardest hit by COVID-19, along with local community challenges including poverty, crowding, food insecurity, homelessness and other existing social determinants of health, we are providing the highest quality of care to the communities that need it most.

We are researching new COVID-19 treatment approaches in partnership with prominent academic institutions. For example, we are collaborating with the Morehouse School of Medicine to study the effect of sickle cell trait on COVID-19, a trait that is prevalent in 8% to 10% of Black Americans. The results of this cutting-edge research will help one of the groups hardest hit by the coronavirus.

We conducted an ACE inhibitor virtual clinical trial with Yale University by applying artificial intelligence to our data. Our study found that seniors on ACE inhibitors who test positive for COVID-19 are 40% less likely to need hospitalization than those who are not. Understanding there is significant racial disparity in the use of ACE inhibitors to manage hypertension, we are working to rapidly scale this large 10,000-person virtual clinical trial, believed to be the first of its type.