ECRI Provides Insight into Advancing Health Equity in Clinical Guidelines

Health inequities across racial and ethnic groups are well documented but often overlooked during clinical guideline development. ECRI is helping to close that gap, with the goal of improving patient care and health outcomes.

ECRI’s Clinical Evidence team contributed to a series of articles examining how systematic reviews and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines address health equity.

Kelley Tipton, MPH, ECRI Associate Director for Clinical Evidence Contracts, is first author on one of the articles, which reviewed the ECRI Guidelines Trust to determine to what extent the guidelines note health disparities, embed equity considerations into the methods or recommendations, and incorporate racially or ethnically diverse patient perspectives.

ECRI strongly believes that health systems must take steps to ensure the health of diverse Americans, and is a trusted partner to health systems trying to improve the health and safety of all patients.

Explore the articles in the Equity Series:

• A Summary of Guidance on Addressing Racial and Ethnic Health Equity in Systematic Reviews and Evidence-Based Guidelines
• A Search of the ECRI Guidelines Trust for Evidence-Based Guidelines Addressing Racial and Ethnic Health Equity
• Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Health Equity in Systematic Reviews and Evidence-Based Guidelines

The work was conducted by an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) workgroup and was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2025.