Congratulations to the LA Health Services Genetics and Genomics Workgroup comprised of Charite Ricker, Dr. Julian Martinez, Marlene Mendoza, Dr. Christine Holschneider, Daisy Hernandez, Dr. Evan Raff, Dr. Ryan Peretz and Dr. Christine Dauphine. The workgroup was recently recognized by the California Health Care Safety Net Institute (SNI) and their partner, the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (CAPH), which recognized and celebrated the achievements of six public health care systems in California at the Quality Leaders Awards (QLA) for their respective efforts to advance high-quality, equitable care throughout the State.

The 2023 QLA winners were announced at the CAPH/SNI Annual Conference, that was held December 6-8 in Long Beach. The event brought together leaders from across California’s public health care systems to celebrate their achievements and gain insight from top health care experts. This year’s theme ‘Stronger Together: 40 years of Collaboration’ underscored CAPH/SNI members’ decades-long commitment to working together to strengthen California’s public health care safety net.

“We are thrilled to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding efforts of our six winners and their inspiring approaches to advance equitable and high-quality health care,” said Giovanna Giuliani, SNI Executive Director. “All of our members have a shared commitment to continually innovating and improving how they deliver care. This year’s QLA winners were standouts in their categories, and we are so excited to be able to recognize these leading initiatives taking place within our public health care systems.”

The program that was honored for the Care Redesign category is called “Advancing Equity and Reducing Disparities in Care by Expanding Access to Genetic and Genomic Testing in the Safety Net”.

According to the Genetics and Genomic Workgroup, advanced genetic testing offers significant promise to improve care for many life-threatening diseases, but inequities in access to genetic testing and counseling among racial and ethnic minorities threaten to exacerbate disparities in health care outcomes. To increase appropriate care delivery for genetic diseases, LA Health Services (DHS) has established a multidisciplinary genetics and genomics optimization program to develop and align best practices for screening, testing, and counseling of conditions with a genetic basis of disease to improve outcomes and reduce care gaps. Since its creation, the program has improved on several of its goals, including improving clinical guidelines, hereditary cancer risk assessment and testing, and streamlined patient navigation. See a video about the project here.

To learn more about the other health care systems that were honored, look here.