Understanding Healthcare Needs

Key Business Question

A leading healthcare insurer sought to gain a deeper understanding of personal, social, and cultural factors that influence health and illness in the African-American community. In addition, they desired to gain insight into patient interactions with physicians and health care professionals.

Our Approach

To accomplish their research objectives, five focus groups were conducted among their members. Three groups were among males and females 40 – 64 years of age, and two groups among those 65+ years of age.

Insights Uncovered

We identified several opportunities for the healthcare insurer to positively affect the health care solutions they provided to their African-American members including:

  • Establish goals of reducing diabetes and hypertension among their African-American constituency
  • Providing education (community events, classes, texts, emails and social media) on the aspects of diabetes and hypertension, ways to prevent and treatments for these diseases
  • Cultural sensitivity training for health care professionals to help in building effective relationships with African-American patients.