This week's episode of NCQA's Inside Health Care podcast observes National Diabetes Month. We feature a discussion with two experts in diabetes care who discuss the links between diabetes diagnosis and kidney disease. Following that, we have a chat with NCQA President Peggy O'Kane about moving Health Equity solutions to the top of U.S. health care agenda.

More than  37 million adults in the U.S. have chronic kidney disease, but because so many are asymptomatic, most of them don’t know they have it.  Bayer recently teamed up with NCQA to develop a Kidney Health Toolkit, an amazing package of materials that helps providers and agencies teach the link between chronic kidney health and related conditions, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Daniel Wilson, MD, is Senior Medical Director at Bayer Pharmaceuticals. Following over 25 years as a clinical cardiologist and nephrologist, Dr. Wilson served as the Medical Lead Clinician for Pfizer before joining biopharmaceutical company Relypsa as Executive Medical Director for Medical Affairs. His work led to the development of many significant medications taken by millions of people each day.

Dr. Mary Barton, MD, serves as NCQA’s Vice President for Performance Measurement. In her role, Dr. Barton oversees the development, use and maintenance of techniques NCQA uses to evaluate health care quality. She ensures the scientific integrity of NCQA measurement and research. She also leads NCQA in winning and executing health care quality measurement contracts for federal and state governments.

Prior to NCQA, Barton worked for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), where she was the scientific director of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). She supported and provided oversight for the methodological, evidence review and recommendation-making work of the USPSTF. Before joining AHRQ, Barton was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, her alma mater, where she performed clinical epidemiology and health services research related to cancer screening and prevention in terms of access, test performance and outcomes. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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