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Providence has launched a fellowship program aimed at helping leaders across the health system identify and address care inequities.
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The fellowship is part of Providence’s larger commitment to bridging health gaps across all populations. In 2020, Providence pledged $50 million toward equity initiatives, and several fellows have received a portion of this funding for their projects.
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Two cohorts have graduated from the program and are now leading initiatives to improve care and experiences for vulnerable populations. A third cohort began in May 2025.
Providence is bridging health gaps for patients through an innovative health equity fellowship that focuses on educating its caregivers about health inequities and empowering them to incorporate these learnings in their daily work. Two cohorts have graduated from the program and are now leading initiatives to improve care and experiences for vulnerable populations.
Thus far, the initiatives have shown promising results:
- A 13% decline in Spanish-speaking women canceling or missing their annual wellness appointments.
- Shorter length of stay and fewer readmissions for Black patients who develop sepsis due to chronic conditions.
- A 25% reduction in average length of stay and a 28% reduction in readmissions for sepsis patients with limited English proficiency.
- Increase in the number of immunizations among Black patients with Medicaid coverage.
“If our goal is to build health equity, then we need to have people teaching others and bringing it forward, talking about it and doing the work,” said Russell Davis, a senior program manager at Providence who works on clinical operations and process improvements. “This program has the potential to build health equity further into the culture of the organization as it grows and develops.”
That’s exactly what Whitney Haggerson, vice president of health equity and Medicaid, envisions for the program: The fellowship helps leaders from across the health system identify and address care inequities.
“Health equity, closing care gaps, that’s not just the job of people who have ‘health equity’ in their title,” Haggerson said. “We’re recruiting people who are in positions to build this into their day-to-day work.”
Each cohort includes 21 caregivers, but Haggerson said the program’s reach spans well beyond its fellows.
“Rather than going a mile wide with 30 or more teams of five or six caregivers each, we opted to dive deeper with fewer caregivers who would each lead their own projects with their own teams,” Haggerson said. “This will advance equity, in real time, giving them a chance to apply their learnings from the fellowship. We’re making an investment in 21 fellows every year but we’re really getting 100 champions from this program over time.”
Relaying the importance of wellness visits to Spanish-speaking women
Davis, who recently finished the program’s second cohort, focused his project on the rates of late cancellations for women’s wellness appointments among Spanish-speaking patients. He started with a sampling of patients across Providence’s seven states, because statistics show this population cancels or misses appointments at a rate of 27%, compared to about 14% for English-speaking populations. As a result, this group experiences poorer outcomes for conditions like cervical cancer, which are often more treatable when found in early stages.
“When we looked into it, we found this population struggles to prioritize wellness visits because there’s no urgent need,” Davis said. “And there are issues outside our control, like means of transportation, childcare or not being able to get time off work, that keep them from getting to the appointment.”
As part of his initiative, Davis and Ivon Moreno Lothe, a bilingual nurse, reviewed communications sent to these patients. After finding that communications were more clinical than warm and personal, they worked together to develop empathetic messaging that explained why wellness visits are important for patients and their families.
Davis and his team then recorded a video and sent the new messaging to a test group, with the resulting late cancellation rates of this test group dropping to 14%, nearly identical to other populations.
Educating sepsis patients through storytelling
At Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Oregon, Dr. Shelley Schoepflin Sanders focused on reducing sepsis-related readmissions for Black patients. Meanwhile, at Providence Mission Hospital in California, Moojan Rezvan, Supervisor of Interpreter Services and a fellow in the program’s first cohort, led a parallel effort focused on reducing length of stay and readmission rates for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP).
When left untreated, sepsis — a life-threatening condition arising from the body's extreme response to an infection — can lead to organ dysfunction or death.
Dr. Sanders and Resvan used different tactics to address the issue. Dr. Sanders worked with an artist to develop a graphic novel that walks a Black patient through their journey with sepsis.
“Storytelling is a powerful educational tool,” Dr. Sanders said. “I believe that by sharing a relatable story, we empower patients to engage more meaningfully with their health care providers.”
Rezvan created an educational patient video about sepsis in five languages and secured funding for a bilingual sepsis nurse navigator position to guide these patients through their hospitalization and their care after discharge.
“This position is the bridge across the continuum of care for all these patients,” she said. “The patient and their family members are receiving communication in a linguistically and culturally appropriate manner. The nurse navigator makes sure the patient has the support they need after leaving the hospital.”
With these tactics in place, sepsis readmissions for Black patients across Providence hospitals in Oregon have reduced. The length of stay and readmissions for sepsis patients with limited-English proficiency at Providence Mission Hospital have also decreased to nearly the same as English-speaking patients, closing the disparity between the two populations.
Bridging the care gaps
Results like these are promising and a sign of what Haggerson hopes will emerge from current and future cohorts.
“In health care, we’re notorious for just launching pilot programs, then coming back in six months to see that it didn’t work, and we walk away,” she said. “So we teach the fellows to go deep into the process, to do continual process improvement.”
The fellowship program does this by pairing each fellow with a mentor to help with their project. The fellows also spend the year learning about the history of inequities and what other organizations are doing to bridge health gaps.
Dr. Sanders, in particular, appreciated the chance to hear from and speak with Dora Hughes, M.D., the chief medical officer for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“Partway through her presentation, she stopped her slides and said she just wanted to listen to us because we’re on the ground doing the work,” Dr. Sanders remembered. “I thought, ‘wow, I’m getting to talk to the CMO of CMS!’ and I had a message for her about how CMS measures sepsis.”
As chair of Providence’s Sepsis Focus Group, Dr. Sanders had strong feelings about CMS’ work on the condition. She was able to schedule a meeting with Dr. Hughes to discuss the benefits of Providence’s measurement system.
Reflecting on her experience, Rezvan said the fellowship is allowing her opportunities to be involved in high-profile projects that she wouldn’t otherwise be recruited for.
“As a fellow, I felt like I was given two golden wings that I could fly as high as I wanted with,” she said.
What’s next
The fellowship is part of Providence’s larger commitment to bridging health gaps across all populations. In 2020, Providence pledged $50 million toward equity initiatives, and several fellows have received a portion of this funding for their projects.
A third cohort began the fellowship in May 2025. Like the first two cohorts, fellows in the third class come from across various functions of the Providence family of organizations– in addition to patient care, the fellowship has included caregivers from brand, finance, real estate and other non-clinical functions.
“Within the next five years, I would like to see the program fully sustained by fellowship alumni coming back to teach future cohorts,” Haggerson said. “I also want to see us solidify a way to spread and scale the amazing programs launched as part of the fellowship across our footprint.”
Learn more about health equity at Providence.
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Related resources
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This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care. Always follow your health care professional’s instructions.
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