Achieving Health Equity in Healthcare Requires Investment, Data, and Better Educational Tools

Achieving health equity has been a long-term challenge for the healthcare industry and a topic that has received more national and global attention since the COVID-19 pandemic. Marginalized communities in particular face deep disparities when trying to access healthcare and in their health outcomes. According to the Harvard Business Review, when compared to their white counterparts:

• Black persons are 30 percent more likely to die from heart disease

• Hispanic women are 30 percent more likely to die from cervical cancer, and

• Native American and Alaska Natives infant mortality is 60 percent higher.

COVID-19 exposed the longstanding social determinants of health such as class, race, and education level. Data from the Harvard School of Public Health, for example, showed that more Black persons in the USA were dying from COVID-19 than whites, even though they make a smaller percentage of the population.

Healthcare inequities were exacerbated by the pandemic. Now there is an increased urgency to invest in health equity, and to track and address social determinants of health. Stacey Caywood, CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health, discusses the three steps her organization is taking to address the ongoing challenge of achieving health equity.

Stacey’s Thoughts 

“At Wolters Kluwer, this is in our DNA: To deliver the best care everywhere. We’re focusing our efforts in three key areas. First, we have a US and global donation program, working with partners like Ariadne Labs to provide more access to the best evidence no matter where you live. Second, we know you can’t fix health equity if you can’t find it, and you need health data to do that. Our health language team is mapping that disparate data to make sense of it, to help populations that are most at risk. Lastly, delivering the best care everywhere starts at the core content and tools that clinicians are using every day. This means reducing unconscious bias in those resources that can negatively impact patient care decisions. This also applies to supporting the training and the delivery that’s needed, so that everyone has access to the best care, one improved decision at a time.”

Car Racing Industry Needs Diverse Revenue Streams to Survive Rising Costs of Track Maintenance, Real Estate, and Unruly Fans

NASCAR is in a race to rebrand as the company faces the financial impacts of rising costs to maintain their tracks and land ownership. It’s an inescapable fact that car racing is a real-estate heavy sport, and therefore the car racing industry is an expensive one to manage. Martinsville Speedway, the smallest NASCAR track, is 0.526 miles long and covers over 340 acres. In comparison, MetLife Stadium, one of the largest NFL stadiums, covers only 75 acres. A lot of capital is needed to maintain the tracks and to ensure safe racing conditions.

Since reaching the zenith of its popularity between the late 90s and mid 2000s, NASCAR has had difficulties selling out seats in their grandstands. Less revenue from seats means less money to cover track maintenance costs. As a result, NASCAR is looking at ways to diversify their revenue streams and to attract a more diverse and younger generation of fans, like F1 did with their digital-first marketing approach and Netflix documentary Drive To Survive.

In April, Sports Business Journal reported that NASCAR decided to sell 433 acres of its California Speedway for over $500 million. According to the report, NASCAR plans to use the money from the sale to redevelop other properties and to invest in new projects that they hope will attract a new generation of fans.

Brian Czech, Founder and Board President of Battle Scarred Motorsports, shares his thoughts about the impacts of rising costs for the car racing industry to maintain its tracks, manage land ownership, and deal with a new generation of fans.

Brian’s Thoughts

“When Battle Scarred Motorsports, when we’re out traveling and we go to different racetracks in different states, we see a lot of the small hometown dirt tracks tend to be closing. I’ve been to a couple locally here in Mississippi thanks to Daniel Johnson, who took me out with him. I talked to a couple people that were there that were friends of [Daniel’s], and they were telling me that a lot of the tracks were closing, just soaring prices, of course, across the board. But a lot of the [tracks] that actually survive, survive through vendors, believe it or not, selling concessions throughout the event, that’s what keeps them going. You’ve got razor thin margins. It’s like running a restaurant. It’s almost the same deal with 10 times the square footage, probably a hundred.

The other issue that I remember seeing at a track that I had been to personally, and I had enjoyed with some friends a while back, I saw something come across Facebook, this is two or three years ago, where they essentially were closing for all the reasons I listed above. But the major issue was they were closing because there was a complete lack of respect from the younger generation. They got sick of it. If they’re running a razor thin profit margin company, and now they’re dealing with crappy customers who want to fight and break the rules all the time, what’s the point? And they closed, they shuttered, they closed down for that. So it’s sad. And the industry is absolutely struggling, and hopefully they figure a way to make it better.”

Cybercriminals are Using AI in Scams. Organizations Need to Prepare for Additional AI Cybersecurity

Cybercriminals are using AI to make their scams more convincing and sophisticated than ever. The result is a slew of new AI cybersecurity threats to both businesses and consumers.

In January, Forbes reported that several major hacking communities were using ChatGPT to develop malware that could spy on users’ keyboards. Fraudsters are also using AI tools to simulate voices in imposter scams; NBCNews reported an incident in March, where a man received a phone call from his daughter, who said she was being held hostage. The daughter’s voice was actually a replication created by AI.

While ChatGPT and other AI tools do pose cybersecurity risks for businesses and consumers, it also offers many benefits including increased efficiency, improved data monitoring, and reduction of human error. Companies see the potential and are exploring ways to integrate these tools into their business practices, and ways to balance the benefits and risks of this technology.

As cybercriminals are using AI to enhance their scams, organizations want to know what they need to do to prepare for bad actors, and the potential negative uses for AI tools. Doriel Abrahams, U.S. Head of Risk at Forter, shares his thoughts about what AI cybersecurity trends will play out this year.

Doriel’s Thoughts

“With the rise of ChatGPT and its new iteration ChatGPT-4, there are a lot of interesting and important conversations to be had surrounding generative AI. One of those is about potential use of those tools in fraud. The reality is that online crime has one weakest link and that link is human intervention.

ChaptGPT, or other tools, can manipulate and prey on human emotion and can become part of an ongoing fraud war. It can be used to make scams more convincing. Think about Roman scams, where people try to befriend you. Or even business email, corporate scams, where people send emails to finance teams, trying to get them to change bank accounts, from which you pay vendors. What happens if you reroute funds to other accounts, or how do you convince people to do that? The use and power of AI can make those emails look a lot more authentic.

We’ve already seen in the past holiday season a huge, massive manipulator problem, and they were very scalable. Just thinking about the ability to use those tools and get more scale, it can be a big thing and a game changer for the online crime community.

It already has been used to create all sorts of different materials and broadcasts, and it’s likely going to get even worse. It can significantly impact crime in the service industry; all the things that are being sold on the dark web. You can either buy data, or buy access to data that is being achieved by simple AI manipulation on people. It can be used to get addresses of people. It can be used to get payment information of people, social security numbers. Potentially, if the scam is good enough, you might unknowingly expose your entire identity and private details to those fraudsters. 

[Generative AI] has so much potential to help us evolve with people, and all the new cool things that we’re seeing day to day that these types of tools can be applied for. But when you think about it there’s a lot of fraud that you can do with those tools at the same time.

Organizations need to be prepared, because it is coming. You know what happens when the criminal experts start exploring the ways they can use generative AI. Are there reasons to panic? Maybe, and maybe not. Most important is that we know what this tool is capable of, and how to think differently when we’re encountering things that might look like a scam. It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal for better, but also for worse, so we just need to be ready.”