New approaches and new partnerships are clearly needed to help close the health gap in the United States. The National Partnership for Action (NPA) to End Health Disparities was established to mobilize a nationwide, comprehensive, community-driven, sustained approach to combating health disparities and to move the nation toward achieving health equity. Altarum Institute is assisting the Office of Minority Health (OMH) in developing and executing an implementation strategy for the NPA. The purpose of the contract is to assist OMH in moving from a conceptual approach to a concrete and measurable implementation strategy that energizes, engages, and builds the capacity of stakeholders at the national, regional, state, and local levels.

Altarum is assisting OMH by doing the following:

• Gathering feedback from a technical advisory group of diverse experts in health disparities and strategic planning
• Conducting a comparative assessment of pending health reform provisions and developing specific recommendations to enhance their ability to improve access to health care for communities of color
• Supporting implementation of the NPA by drafting an implementation strategy, presenting about the NPA at relevant conferences, and collaborating with other OMH contractors
• Providing technical assistance to support and sustain the implementation strategy at the national, regional, state, and community levels
• Providing support to the Federal Interagency Health Equity Team subcommittees as they identify strategies for carrying out the NPA recommendations at the federal level
• Providing support to OMH in the development of several reports to Congress detailing the development process and progress made on the NPA