As Chief Health Equity Officer, Dr. Pooja Mittal is charged with improving equity and care for Health Net’s 3 million California members. She brings a strong data focus, skills in community organizing and a passion for social justice to this work – continuing her mother’s path as a family practice doctor working with farmworkers in California. 

We discuss: 

• Co-designing more equitable outcomes with communities and members
• How member grievance and appeal data provides a roadmap to missed opportunities, discrimination and road blocks
• Health Net’s experience implementing a doula benefit which laid the groundwork for statewide rollout of doula services in Medicaid 
• The importance of reducing complexity and administrative barriers for new community partners

Dr. Mittal tell us how she combats fatigue on the road to health equity:

“How do I continue the work? … I try and think about the power of radical incremental change … How every little thing that we do actually has the power to have ripple effects that improve health for people, broadly. And so that's one way I sort of combat that. And then the other is really coming back to my why … Why am I in this work? Why does it matter to me, and what am I trying to accomplish?”

Relevant Links

Street Medicine - MLKCH and Expanding Access to Care (Page 5)

Street Medicine - $1.5M USC Grant

Unhoused - $114M with LA Care Health Plan

COVID Support - Initiatives

COVID Support - RV Program

About Our Guest

Dr. Pooja Mittal is Medical Director of Health Equity at HealthNet, a Medicaid managed care organization. She is a family physician and uses this lens to design strategic initiatives to improve care for the most vulnerable. She is a member of the leadership team that works to further equitable care through a population health model for all HealthNet members. She has an expertise in digital health through her work in the HealthNet Digital Platforms Workgroup devising a defined digital strategy to support quality and member engagement.

Dr. Mittal also works at the National Clinicians Consultation Center at UCSF, a national HIV/AIDS warmline, where she is recognized as a national expert on Perinatal HIV care. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition to her clinical work, she has published in the areas of well-child care, group visits, preconception care, health equity and perinatal HIV.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email [email protected] and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn