April 29, 2025
In a recent episode of the Centering Health Equity podcast, Lupe Alonzo-Diaz, President and CEO of Physicians for a Healthy California (PHC), and Reggie Tucker-Seeley, Principal of Health Equity Strategies and Solutions, discussed findings from PHC’s report, The Long Road to Equity: Early Insights from California’s Chief Health Equity Officers.
The report, co-authored by Alonzo-Diaz and Tucker-Seeley, examined the evolving role of chief health equity officers (CHEOs) in California. The report drew from interviews and surveys with CHEOs across California’s health care system to illuminate their efforts to eliminate health disparities and embed an equity focus within their organizations.
“Research shows that health disparities result in $93 billion in excess medical care costs and $42 billion in lost productivity,” said Alonzo-Diaz. “The goal of the report was to explore the rules, the responsibilities, the priorities, and the experiences of these senior health leaders within their organizations that are charged with the efforts to eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity in California.”
The podcast conversation touched on the complex and challenging realities of these roles. Tucker-Seeley emphasized the unrealistic expectations often placed on a single individual tasked with leading equity initiatives.
“I think this idea that we've had that an organization has hired a Chief Health Equity Officer and that that person is going to be solely responsible for making these changes is unrealistic and places an undue burden on that whole individual to address issues that have been – if not years, decades, even centuries – in the making in terms of the differences that we see in health and health care related outcomes across race and place,” said Tucker-Seeley .
Both speakers highlighted the need for institutional support and buy-in, noting that health equity cannot be the work of one individual or office. They also reflected on the novelty of the CHEO role and the learning curve many leaders face as they try to direct organizational priorities towards health equity.
“The challenge is there isn't a long history of these roles that we can lean on to say this is how it's done, across the board,” said Tucker-Seeley . “And so people were – to pull on that old sort of analogy – building the plane while they were flying it and trying to figure out the things that worked in their respective contexts.”
Alonzo-Diaz highlighted how CHEOs were able to compensate for the lack of a clear playbook for their roles by creating informal peer networks with one another and a safe space to have tough conversations and share information.
These and other health equity themes will be explored at PHC’s upcoming Health Equity Leadership Summit, where health equity thought leaders will continue the conversation on building sustainable structures for advancing equity across California’s health care system. The Summit, which will be held July 10-11 in Pasadena, will offer an opportunity to deepen the peer connections highlighted in the report and to share strategies for overcoming common challenges.
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