Health equity means that everyone has a fair opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to good health, including lack of access to quality education and housing.
To better support our members, Capital Blue Cross is taking steps to collect health equity data to help us record members’ cultural and linguistic needs, share those preferences with their providers, develop more inclusive programs and services, educate our workforce, and more respectfully engage with the people and communities we serve.
We will soon ask members to complete an optional, secure questionnaire about their race, ethnicity, and language (REL), and sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) needs and preferences. Group, individual account, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Medicare Advantage members will be asked to complete versions of the questionnaire.
Only non-CHIP members aged 18 and above will be asked for their SOGI preferences. Minors and all CHIP members will only be asked about REL data. Parents or guardians may complete the questionnaire on behalf of their covered dependents. Medicare members provide race and ethnicity data on their enrollment application, so we will only send them questions about their language and SOGI preferences.
Key details to keep in mind about this optional questionnaire:
We will contact members using a phased approach across several channels — including email, Capital Blue Cross Loop text messages, and mail — over several months.
The information members provide will be protected through our established and tested privacy and digital security policies.
The information we receive will not be used to make any decisions about coverage or services.
We will make a second attempt later this year to collect this information from those who didn’t participate.
If you have any questions about content in this email, please contact your account executive.