As a mother, physician, philanthropist and woman of color, all my life I’ve witnessed how inequalities of race and ethnicity, gender and class haunt just about every corner of our society and block the path for millions of us to good health, good quality health care and to a good life itself.

The code word is “disparities,” which technically means “the state of being different.”  It really means what happens when you’re not white: that your overall health is at higher risk and that you’re not going to get the same level of health care.

Yet, I optimistically tell myself that we are making progress.  Until I attend one of those health policy conferences that draw the top researchers, health policy leaders and decision makers.  And once again, I find myself a lonely standout in a crowd of mostly male white faces.

How can America overcome inequalities and disparities in health and health care if the same experts and leaders researching the ideas, developing policy, making decisions and providing care are not as diverse as we, the American people, ourselves?

Can a room full of white middle-class professionals fully comprehend what constitutes “culturally competent” care for a low-income immigrant Latino mother struggling to raise her kids in a crime-ridden neighborhood? 

Or know what it takes to run a hospital in East Los Angeles or the South Bronx where 30 percent or more of the patients are foreign-born, speak as many as 104 different languages and present a spectrum of conditions peculiar to their own race or ethnicity or country of origin? 

The answers are obvious – those white guys can’t or haven’t or won’t.  What’s missing are ample numbers of minority experts working along with them, especially from the Latino, African-American and American Indian communities.    

Minorities may make up nearly 31 percent of our population nationally – but of all the members of Academy Health, the main organization for health services researchers and policy makers, only 1.5 percent are Hispanic and a barely perceptible 0.2 percent are Native American.  Only 3 percent of medical school and 16 percent of public health school faculties are minorities; among city and county health officers, 17 percent are minorities. 

In other words, our “insight gap” overlaps with our “diversity gap.”

As a result, researchers, government officials and health care leaders are making critical decisions affecting the lives of huge segments of America’s diverse and distinct peoples without grounding in the real-world experiences of the people and families involved.

Yes, their decision-making is informed by research and hard data.  But research without insight won’t do it; without authentic and empathetic insight we cannot accurately decode the mysteries locked within all that data and more importantly turn the research into workable solutions to improve the health of people in this country.

This tells me we have a pipeline problem: the necessary up-and-coming talent isn’t in it.  

We believe we have a way to help fill that pipeline and close both insight and disparity gaps at the same time.  We call it the RobertWoodJohnFoundationCenter for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. The Center will be a physical, cultural and educational home for a new cadre of Hispanic and Native American health policy scholars, researchers, policy makers and leaders.  With an initial commitment of $18.5 million, the Center will be fully operational this fall.   

There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the country. However, it comes straight out of America’s tradition of successful social movements – civil rights, school desegregation, tobacco policy.  Each movement depended on the energy, passion and direction of leaders who relied on solid policy research.  So too will the future of health policy and health care in America and our new Center aims to help shape that future.

My own life’s experience teaches me that health care is a human right and good health is essential for society’s survival.  Establishing once and for all a health care system that is fair and equal for all is a moral imperative.  Eliminating disparities in care is a moral obligation.  

As we change the face of health policy leadership in the U.S. we expect health care itself to become more representative, more inclusive, more diverse.  Our hope is that others will join us in making equality an accepted fact of life in the health care of our society.  The health and well-being of everyone in America depends on it.