A sobering new U.S. Senate report indicates that nearly 57 million people in the U.S.—about one in five—live in areas where they do not have adequate access to primary healthcare because of a shortage of providers. This shortage is most pronounced in rural and low-income areas, and it means more emergency-room visits, less access to preventive care, and less chance of someone establishing a relationship of trust with a healthcare provider.

Access to primary care has repeatedly been shown to have a strong impact on health disparities: One study from 2005 showed that access reduced deaths among Blacks four times more than among whites—even after controlling for education and income. Findings such as this usually point to the value primary care provides in terms of early detection and treatment of conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, and in terms of the ability to be screened for cancers, such as colon cancer, which are more likely to be treatable if discovered early.

As the shortage intensifies, the Association of American Medical Colleges reports that, while there has been a decrease in Black men applying to, accepted to, and entering medical school overall, among all people who do apply, Blacks expressed a greater interest in primary-care fields than other demographic groups.

Blacks and Latinos are also willing to practice medicine in underserved areas more than any other group. Yet the gap will not be closed any time soon if the percentage of medical-school graduates does not better reflect the U.S. population: Over the past two years, the percentage of white entrants to medical school exceeded all other racial and ethnic groups by a substantial amount—57.1 percent in 2010 and 57.5 percent in 2011—while Black and Latino entrants were less than 15 percent of the total. Consider that Blacks and Latinos together are almost 30 percent of the U.S. population (and increasing rapidly, especially Latinos), and the gap seems even greater.

Further, these percentages of graduates are not necessarily even translating into similar percentages of practicing physicians. Blacks represent 14 percent of the U.S. population and only 4 percent of physicians, according to U.S. Census data and the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile, as reported by Kaiser Permanente. Meanwhile, Latinos represent 16 percent of the population and 5 percent of physicians.

In June 2012, Kaiser Permanente took a substantial step to close this gap: The organization expanded its relationship with National Medical Fellowships and contributed $1 million to support medical students through education and training programs. NMF is a not-for-profit organization that seeks to increase the pipeline of doctors, nurses and physician assistants from underrepresented groups by providing scholarships to medical students and by offering service learning programs to students in the health professions.

Cleveland’s University Hospitals is strongly committed to such efforts and has seen impressive results through its David Satcher Clerkship, a national model for recruiting Black and Latino medical students. Since the program’s inception in 1991, UH has increased its Black and Latino representation from 3 to 10 percent. The hospital’s Henry L. Meyer III KeyBank Faculty Minority Fellows Program is another of UH’s efforts to develop medical staff to provide culturally competent care.

The Mayo Clinic’s Minority Medical Student Career Development Programs are designed to help train students in meeting the needs of a diverse patient population. Mayo’s College of Medicine Diversity in Education Blog provides students a place to connect with each other and with those outside Mayo Clinic who are interested in working or receiving medical training there.

The post Can Black and Latino Doctors Solve the Primary-Healthcare Crisis? appeared first on DiversityInc.

A study from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that while white women have a higher incidence of breast cancer, Black women have a 41 percent higher mortality rate—perhaps because more Black women are diagnosed with regional- or distant-stage cancer (45 percent versus 35 percent). Out of every 100 breast-cancer diagnoses, Black women have nine more deaths (27 versus 18).

The report, Vital Signs: Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer Severity, finds that the issue goes beyond genetics: Equity in healthcare access and the quality of that care are major contributors to breast-cancer prognoses.

“Breast-cancer death rates have been declining among U.S. women since 1990 because of early detection and advances in treatment; however, all racial groups have not benefited equally,” reads the report. “Black women experience inequities in breast-cancer screening, follow-up, and treatment after diagnosis, leading to greater mortality.”

Findings include:

• Only 62 percent of Black women start treatment within 30 days, compared with 82 percent of white women.
• Black women’s diagnosis-to-mammogram intervals are longer than white women, even when both individuals have the same insurance—20 percent of Black women had an interval of 60 days or more compared with 12 percent of white women.
• One study showed that equitable treatment could eliminate up to 19 percent of the mortality difference between Black and white women.

Eliminating Racial Disparities in Healthcare

“It’s a complex problem, but there are clearly avoidable components of this that we can address and resolve—the issues related to healthcare quality,” Dr. Marcus Plescia, Director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at the CDC and one of the report’s authors, told The New York Times. “It’s time to step forward and say that this disparity is unacceptable.”

University Hospitals CEO Thomas Zenty recently discussed the impact of diversity management and new healthcare reform laws with DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti, noting the growing need for hospitals and other providers to take a proactive approach to eliminating racial gaps in healthcare coverage. University Hospitals, based in Cleveland, is one of DiversityInc’s Top 5 Hospital Systems.

“Many studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between people of diverse backgrounds being willing to seek care and knowing that people who look like them will actually be providing that care. So the intersection between diversity and disparities is rather significant,” explains Zenty in the video below. “We want to make certain that we’re doing everything that we can to make sure that people of color will be able to work in our organization, hold positions of leadership—caregivers, clinicians and support staff.” Read this Q&A with University Hospitals CEO Thomas Zenty for more.

Eli Lilly and Company Chairman, President and CEO John Lechleiter, who also was interviewed, agrees. He notes that disparities in healthcare have become a global issue—and it’s up to industry corporations and care providers to take the lead in eliminating healthcare disparities.

“The importance of diversity as an underpinning of our business success today and for the future has become more clear to me and more evident,” he says. “Our business is shifting in terms of serving different populations and different segments of different populations, both here in the U.S. and in emerging markets. It’s brought me and the whole company a greater awareness of how different we are with respect to the way in which medicine is practiced, the way in which treatment is sought, the way in which people understand disease and approach therapy.” Read this Q&A with Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter for more. Eli Lilly and Company is No. 29 in the DiversityInc Top 50.

But how can hospitals deliver higher quality care, reduce readmissions and earn maximum HCAHPS reimbursements? What impact can diversity have on clinical trials and retail pharmacies? Get answers to these questions and more at our upcoming diversity event Culturally Competent Care: How Diversity Creates Better Patient Outcomes.

Also, read these articles for more on diversity in healthcare:

What Disease Hits Black Men Most?

Ask the White Guy: The Business Case for Diversity in Healthcare

Improving Healthcare for 68,000 Black & Latino Children

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DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti recently interviewed Thomas F. Zenty III, CEO of the Cleveland-based hospital system. (University Hospitals is one of the 2012 DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems.) Zenty discussed the dramatic impact of the Affordable Care Act and how the hospital’s diversity efforts in the workplace and the community are helping it survive. Read this article and other CEO interviews in our digital issue, and sign up for DiversityInc magazine.

Zenty spoke on this topic at DiversityInc’s event last month, Diversity-Management Best Practices From the Best of the Best. Click here for video of his talk.

Luke Visconti: What is the intersection of solid diversity-management initiatives and the reduction of healthcare disparities?

Thomas F. Zenty III: Many studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between people of diverse backgrounds being willing to seek care and knowing that people who look like them will actually be providing that care. So the intersection between diversity and disparities is rather significant. We want to make certain that we’re doing everything that we can to make sure that people of color will be able to work in our organization, hold positions of leadership—caregivers, clinicians and support staff—in order to make people of all backgrounds, colors and faiths feel comfortable coming to University Hospitals to receive the world-class care that we provide.

Visconti: How is diversity and inclusion a competitive differentiator for a hospital?

Zenty: There is no better way to gain the pulse of what’s happening in the communities that we serve than by having people who live and work in those communities actively engaged with us at every level. From an employee perspective, it’s critically important that we have people of diverse backgrounds who will bring skills, talents, perspective in order to help us to do a better job as we look to achieve our mission. We think it’s critically important for diversity to be well represented across our entire health system at every level, be it gender, religion, race, color. In fact, we’ve recently reached out to the Amish community because one of our hospitals has a very large Amish population, and we realized that we did not have a member of our board who was of Amish descent. As a result, we added a new Amish board member to our hospital, and he’s brought a lot in terms of a better understanding of the Amish community and the healthcare needs of that community.

The point is we need to look into the community to better understand who are the communities that we serve? Who best represents those individuals within those communities that we serve? And how can we engage them at every level, either as employees, as members of the board, as leadership-council members? And we want to make sure that we’re engaging everyone in the communities that we serve.

Visconti: You’re very personally involved in the community. Why?

Zenty: It’s critically important for an organization of our size in a community of this size, as the second-largest private employer in Northeast Ohio, to make certain that we’re going to be focused on diversity at every level within the communities that we serve. Our organizational values include excellence, diversity, integrity, compassion and teamwork. And diversity is one of the key components of the cornerstones of the work that we do every day in taking care of our patients and meeting our mission. As the leader of this organization, it’s critically important for us to be actively engaged in community activities to make certain that we’re not only aware of what’s happening in the community, but play a leadership role in advocating on behalf of many different agenda items. One of the key ones, though, is in the area of diversity in Northeast Ohio.

Visconti: University Hospitals has a 100 on the Corporate Equality Index, the Human Rights Campaign’s index of equality for LGBT people. Why is that important to you?

Zenty: The LGBT community is very important to us for all the other reasons that I stated in all the other populations that we serve. They’re very much a part of our community. We want to make certain that they’re recognized and represented. They have actually recognized us for our work in this regard, which we’re very pleased about.

Visconti: Your chief diversity officer reports directly to you. You also have hands-on interaction with people who are responsible for delivering results in diversity management. How important are these two things?

Zenty: It’s critically important that the chief diversity officer reports to the chief executive officer. Donnie Perkins is our chief diversity officer and does an excellent job in the role. However, it’s also important to note that we have a very close working relationship with Elliott Kellman, who is our chief human resources officer, because so much of what we do in workforce planning and workforce development is structured around the importance of diversity at every level in our organization.

In our organization, we selected the top 24 people from within our health system to be part of an education-and-training program in conjunction with Case Western Reserve School of Business. We’ve engaged 13 physicians and 11 non-physicians who were at senior levels in our organization who we feel have the potential to grow and develop in the years to come within University Hospitals’ health system. They were selected on the basis of their accomplishment. They were selected on the basis of diversity. They were selected on the basis of their ability to grow and develop within our organization. It’s an 18-month program, but we’ve seen great success thus far. One of those individuals has already been promoted to a new senior position that was recently created in our organization.

But at the other end of the spectrum, we’re also concerned that we don’t have enough people of color in our management ranks. So we put together a mentorship program, which will include people at the senior administrative level who will choose people who have promotional capability within our organization, who will be working with each of us to make sure that they will be given the opportunity to grow and develop within our organization in both non-management as well as in management roles, so that we can encourage more people of color to get actively engaged as supervisors, managers, directors, vice presidents.

Visconti: How are you holding your senior team accountable for diversity-and-inclusion results?

Zenty: Our senior team is very actively engaged with Donnie’s leadership in making certain that we are focused on diversity at every level within our organization, looking at the healthcare needs of the people who we serve, making certain that our employees are given equal opportunity for promotion and growth within our health system, making certain that people who are in middle management have opportunities to grow into senior-management roles, and making certain that we are focused on doing everything that we can to prepare the next generation of leader who will be people of color and of diverse backgrounds. Likewise, it’s important to mention that our board has been focused on diversity over the past many years. And I’m pleased to report that the Council on Economic Inclusion has awarded us for two years in a row recognition for the diversity of our board. If we receive it a third year in a row, we’ll go into the Hall of Fame, and we’re hoping that that will be achieved. This actually starts at the top, beginning with our board, and then filters throughout our entire organization.

Visconti: What do you see as the greatest challenge facing University Hospitals? And how does diversity and inclusion factor into the solution?

Zenty: The greatest challenge will be how to address the changes that we’ll be facing under healthcare reform. One of the key things that we will focus on in the area of diversity is to make certain that the 32 million more Americans who will now have access to healthcare insurance that didn’t have it before, that they will be well represented both within the communities that we serve as well as well represented in the patient populations that we care for. We have a number of very strong specialty clinics that will focus on the needs of specific elements within our population. But we want to make certain that as we see this influx of new patients arriving, we clearly understand what their needs will be—which is more than just episodic acute-care needs, but the continuum of care of services that we’ll be able to provide to them in the years to come.

Visconti: I found University Hospitals’ website to be exemplary in its ability to communicate your mission, your values, how diversity ties into all of this, your corporate citizenship, your engagement with the community. Why is it so important to communicate this?

Zenty: University Hospitals really wants to be a leader in the area of diversity. We’ve been in existence since 1866. We’ve been a very active and vibrant part of this community for that same period of time. And we want to make certain that we’re going to be leaders in the area of diversity—to set the example, to set the tone toward diligently making great things happen in the world of diversity, and to make certain that we’re going to focus not only on the needs of our patients, but also on the needs of those within our organization, to make certain that everyone will be able to realize their fullest potential.

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The six CEOs and eight senior executives at our event demonstrated how their personal passion and commitment to diversity have become a critical factor in making strategic business decisions. In many cases, this helped gain traction within senior leadership and generated measurable results in workforce diversity, while sometimes improving market share.

The two-day event featured two panels with six chief diversity officers—one focused on best practices for executive diversity councils and the other on using compensation to drive diversity-management results. Additionally, DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel presented exclusive advice on what companies need to do to improve their DiversityInc Top 50 rank.

Watch all the presentations from this event via the players below or view our YouTube playlist. Videos of all the speakers will be posted throughout the day.

Also, be sure to save the date for our upcoming 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity Announcement Dinner, April 23–24, 2013.

How New York City Drives Diversity Results
R. Fenimore Fisher, Deputy Commissioner, Chief Diversity & EEO Officer, City of New York
How does the City of New York drive diversity metrics and results? Find out from a world-class diversity expert.

Diversity in the Workplace: Leadership Counts
Jorge Benitez, Managing Director – North America, Chief Executive – United States, Accenture
This CEO really values work/life issues. He tells us how he includes spouses and encourages family priorities.

Panel: Best Practices on Executive Diversity Councils
Debbie Storey, AT&T; Rhonda Crichlow, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Michelle Lee, Wells Fargo 
Three companies with the best practices—and results—on diversity councils talk about CEOs chairing the councils, setting goals and accountability.

Building a Strong Diversity Brand
John Bryant, President and CEO, Kellogg
The CEO of Kellogg tells us why his company has invested so much over the last two years in its diversity-management efforts.

Workplace Diversity: The Personal Connection in Leadership
Forest T. Harper, CEO, INROADS 
The son of migrant workers, who went on to be a top Pfizer executive, talks about how INROADS helps Black and Latino college students become corporate leaders. Click here to download the presentation slides.

Corporate Diversity at the Top: Q&A With Luke Visconti
Steve Howe, Area Managing Partner – Americas, Ernst & Young
The U.S. head of Ernst & Young discusses how corporate values drive business decisions at his firm

Diversity & Inclusion: Accountability & Your Business Future
Thomas F. Zenty III, CEO, University Hospitals
The CEO of this Cleveland hospital system tells us how outreach to Blacks and Latinos is driving hospital growth.

Workplace Diversity: Using Leadership to Save Lives & Talent by Creating Inclusive Workplaces
Dr. Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network)
The head of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) tells you about young lives saved through the help of corporations like yours.

Panel on Diversity Metrics: Using Compensation to Drive Results
Maruiel Perkins-Chavis, Marriott International; Joy Fitzgerald, Rockwell Collins; Chad Johnson, Sodexo
Three companies with the most effective diversity metrics tell you what’s on their diversity scorecards and how they link goals to compensation.

Corporate Diversity: A Personal Story of Why Corporate Values Matter
Michelle Lee, Executive Vice President and Northeast Regional President, Wells Fargo
This exec shares her remarkable story of how and why she became a banker and the challenges she faced as the only young, Black woman in her management-training program.

DiversityInc Benchmarking: Tips on How to Move Up on the DiversityInc Top 50 List
Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, DiversityInc
See our tips on the best ways to answer questions on The 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey. Click here to download the presentation slides.

The post 8 CEOs Prove the Intersection of Diversity, Engagement & Innovation appeared first on DiversityInc.

Dr. Drew Hertz, medical director for UH Rainbow Care Network and an assistant clinical professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, was a guest speaker at DiversityInc’s Innovation Fest! event where he explained how this innovative program will provide 24/7 access to nurses and doctors for referrals, advice and healthcare coordination. University Hospitals is one of the 2012 DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems. View the video below.

For closed captions, press the CC button in the YouTube player.

Video Minutes

0:01:48 Funded by a $12.8M Federal Grant

0:03:39 The Physicians Extension Team

0:05:34 Reducing Healthcare Inefficiencies

0:08:59 Five Goals of Rainbow Care Connection

0:09:38 Six Key Programs of Rainbow Care Connection

0:09:57 Create a Physicans Network

0:10:46 Shared Savings Agreements

0:11:38 Practice-Tailored Facilitation

0:13:13 Heightened Support Services

0:13:39 Innovation: Family Care Advocates

0:14:39 Three-Part Behavioral Health Program

0:16:55 General and Targeted Outreach

0:18:10 Three-Part Telehealth Program

0:22:43 Keys to Success

Watch the other Innovation Fest! presentations from our event for more on diversity and innovation.

The post Improving Healthcare for 68,000 Black & Latino Children appeared first on DiversityInc.

Those organizations are most ready for the influx of an estimated 32 million new consumers, most of them lower-income Blacks and Latinos, and the need to care for them on a sustainable basis emphasizing wellness as opposed to constant crisis management. The critical factor in their business strategies, they tell us, is the ability to offer culturally competent healthcare and connect on a large scale to the communities they serve while being more cost effective.

“Our assessment is that the Supreme Court decision on health reform will accelerate existing trends in healthcare and the marketplace,” says Dr. Patricia Simmons, executive medical director for Health Policy at the Mayo Clinic. Those trends include consolidation of facilities, new organizations that combine hospitals and insurance companies, increased accountability for metrics-driven results, and a strong focus on community outreach.

Successful implementation of diversity-management initiatives is giving organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, Eli Lilly and Company, WellPoint, Mayo Clinic, University Hospitals, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Health Care Service Corporation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, Massachusetts General, Cleveland Clinic and the Henry Ford Health System a competitive edge in the new world of expanding affordable healthcare.

“Healthcare reform challenges diversity and inclusion to keep and expand our place at the table,” says Linda Jimenez, chief diversity officer at WellPoint.

Diversity Management Connects to Community

In interviews with DiversityInc, these 11 organizations tell a similar story, with minor variations depending on their business model. All have been long-time diversity leaders, appearing either on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list or The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems list (and one company is on The DiversityInc Top 10 Regional Companies list). All anticipate (and are already seeing) an influx of new patients/customers, mostly from lower-income families, predominantly Latino and Black.

They stress the need to offer culturally competent healthcare and to emphasize wellness prevention and disease management instead of frequent, costly trips to emergency rooms and urgent-care sessions. All are looking at ways to serve far more people, operating more efficiently and streamlining costs. Several of the hospital systems are worried that Medicare funding might not cover their increasing treatment costs.

The resounding sentiment from leaders in these organizations is that their long-term commitments to culturally competent care through diversity-management initiatives have left them in a better strategic position to improve market share. They point to the importance of resource groups in reaching the community and promoting health education. They cite diversity training for customer-facing employees and the need for an employee and leadership base that represents the communities they serve.

Here is an industry-by-industry look at their changing business models and how critical diversity management is to their sustainable success. 

The Affordable Care Act emphasizes preventive care, to save costs by helping more low-income Americans take care of themselves before expensive and life-threatening diseases such as diabetes, cancer, AIDS and high blood pressure develop and to minimize the damage of these diseases in those who already have them. The law specifically calls for investments in community health teams, community health centers and expanded initiatives to increase racial and ethnic diversity in healthcare teams.

Cost Containment: Hospitals

The dilemma for hospitals is how to provide more access while lowering costs at the same time.  “It really requires a lot of innovation to reduce costs, and no one’s figured out how to do it,” says Jeff Davis, senior vice president of Human Resources at Massachusetts General, No. 5 in The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems.

“It’s clear that the new normal in healthcare will involve getting paid less to do more,” says Oliver Henkel, chief external affairs officer at the Cleveland Clinic, No. 3 in The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems. “There will be more patients with access to healthcare, but private and government insurers will pay hospitals and doctors less and less to care for patients. Therefore, we have to drive efficiencies and cost containment to be able to accommodate the increased demand for healthcare.”

There are healthcare models in place, however, that offer best practices in increasing the prevalence of care to underserved communities without adding employees.

Kaiser Permanente, which has both hospitals and health insurance, has made eliminating healthcare disparities through community outreach a key part of its mission for decades.

“Many in the industry are trying to move toward an accountable care model and there will be more people in the marketplace trying to compete on that basis (alliances between insurance, hospitals and physicians). We’ve been in that business for over 60 years,” says Christine Paige, senior vice president of Marketing and Internet Services at Kaiser Permanente (No. 3 in the DiversityInc Top 50).

The difference now is in volume and the impact of having a substantial number of people entering the market in a short period of time, she says. To that end, Kaiser has been expanding its system capabilities through more bilingual employees, increased communications and more personalized experiences for patient populations through more detailed electronic health records. Kaiser Permanente shared its bilingual program at DiversityInc’s Innovation Fest!

University Hospitals, located in the greater Cleveland area, is moving toward an accountable care organization (ACO) to address the changing marketplace. ACOs rely on metrics and cost-care reductions for assigned groups of patients by making hospitals and doctors directly accountable to the patients and the insurance companies for the quality and efficiency of the healthcare delivery. ACOs were piloted with Medicare patients and now, under the Affordable Care Act, will be used for Medicaid patients as well.

“We are facing a doctor shortage in Ohio,” says Dr. Eric Bieber, chief medical officer for University Hospitals, No. 2 in The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems. “We can handle it but we need to be efficient and do what’s right for the patient. We now have an integrated delivery system that helps us touch more patients with our primary-care physicians—and not in the emergency rooms.”

At the Mayo Clinic, the hospital is working on creative reimbursement models for insurance companies to “control costs and increase value and make care more affordable,” says Dr. Simmons. Mayo Clinic is also working on improving relationships with other hospitals and medical institutions to provide better access. For example, an affiliate-practice network from various medical institutions sends physicians to treat patients at local affiliates and helps patients stay in their communities. Mayo Clinic is No. 4 in The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems.

The Henry Ford Health System in Detroit last year bought a Medicaid health-maintenance organization (HMO) so it can offer Medicaid patients comprehensive care. “Hospitals need to better provide care. It’s really about how we can survive financially when more people have insurance,” says CEO Nancy Schlichting. But she worries that the act, as it stands now, isn’t giving hospitals enough funding for the addition. “The population is the same; it’s just how we pay for them. We’re advocating very hard for the expansion of Medicaid funding.”

Henry Ford, she says, now receives more than $200 million a year in uncompensated healthcare, but under the act as it stands now, that amount is cut to $30 million. “It’s really how we can survive financially,” she says. “When people have insurance, as they now will, they won’t wait to go to the doctors. We don’t need to change our operations, just our payment system.” Henry Ford Health System is No. 1 in The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems.

At Massachusetts General, the situation is a little different because the state has had universal healthcare in effect since 2006 and 97 percent of state residents already have health insurance, according to Davis.

“We adjusted to meet access demands but are still trying to increase the number of primary-care physicians, nurses and physicians’ assistants. Nationally, the first few years of the law will be all about access. It will require a lot of innovation to reduce costs,” he says. He believes the increase in ACOs will allow more people community access.

Cost Containment: Insurance Companies

For the health-insurance companies, the Affordable Care Act literally turns the landscape upside down. In addition to providing insurance for millions of low-income Americans, they can no longer deny care to those with pre-existing, and often expensive, conditions.

For these organizations, the urgent business shift is in focusing on consumers rather than business sales. And cost-savings are critical. “Right now we know that we have to do a lot of work to be a viable player in the consumer market,” says Jon Urbanek, senior vice president, Sales and Marketing for Employer Markets, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSF), No. 6 in The DiversityInc Top 10 Regional Companies. “Our focus is on significantly improving our consumer capabilities. At the same time, we’re the leader in the group market and we’ve got to maintain a significant presence there.”

BCBSF has addressed this in the long term by investing in retail centers throughout Florida that will put 90 percent of the population within 30 minutes’ drive of a center. In addition to selling health insurance at the centers, there will be free wellness and screening facilities as well as culturally competent health coaching. The organization also is putting much more health information online, as well as having bilingual call centers. “The information has always been out there, but it’s been in 10 different places in language you can’t understand, and there’s nothing like the ability to see it simply and in one place,” says Urbanek.

Like the hospitals, the insurance companies are often combining efforts to be more efficient. WellPoint, Health Care Service Corporation and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan (all part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield network) now have a joint effort to create a private exchange with a defined contribution approach to give employers information on managing their healthcare offerings.

These efficiencies enable them to focus more on healthcare disparities, says Carolyn Clift, chief diversity officer at Health Care Service Corporation (No. 19 in the DiversityInc Top 50). “We can offer the providers training. We can help them help us determine if they have a language capability they have not included before in a directory … these plans were in place before the Affordable Care Act started to take fold. As a result of the ACA, we’re moving more steadily to implementing more of these programs and projects so we can reach the broad diverse audience.”

Kirk Roy, vice president of National Health Reform at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies), notes that the act has direct regulations requiring insurers to communicate in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner. To meet this requirement, the organization partnered with a translation service and now can communicate in more than 100 languages.

Innovation: Pharmas 

For pharmaceutical companies, the challenge to stay competitive is in new drugs that reach the increasingly diverse population. And that requires innovation, which all of the drug firms say requires diversity of thought, experience and background.

“The firms that are already there understand the benefit of a holistic diversity-management approach that makes them better run, have better leadership, have better creativity, better innovation, better productivity and better bottom-line impact,” says Shaun Hawkins, chief diversity officer of Eli Lilly and Company (No. 29 in the DiversityInc Top 50).

While drug manufacturers were relatively untouched by the Affordable Care Act’s specific regulations, they will be strongly affected by expanding rebates for Medicare and Medicaid that will enable more patients to have access to more drugs. That will create a rise in sales volume and patient demand, especially for the influx of new people who are insured.

Because health-insurance companies are looking to cut costs, pharmaceutical companies also will have to demonstrate more cost/benefit of their products. For a company like Eli Lilly, which has had a strong focus on clinical trials aimed at Blacks and Latinos, the emphasis is on developing drugs that effectively prevent and treat the diseases so prevalent in these populations: diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.

“We are an innovation-based company in an innovation-based industry, focused on breakthroughs for the next round of diseases and how they impact race, ethnicity, gender and age,” Hawkins says.

Solutions: Diversity-Management Resources

For the hospitals, resource groups are an increasingly valuable means of connecting to the increasingly multicultural patient base. A critical part of that is the role they play in community education.

At University Hospitals, for example, the resource groups are working with Black and Latino community leaders to conduct prevention screenings and health-education screenings. They recently partnered with corporate and other Cleveland-area healthcare organizations to support a cultural arts fair called Fairfax, primarily aimed at Blacks. The resource groups helped the hospital bring in a team of nurses and health professionals to conduct screenings and encourage them to interact with primary-care physicians.

“Trust is often an issue in the community. The resource-group employees often live in those communities as well,” says Donnie Perkins, chief diversity officer at University Hospitals.

Increasing the level of cultural-competence training is a high priority for the hospitals as well. While Kaiser Permanente has been a leader in this area for years, other hospitals increasingly recognize the importance of this to the new marketplace.

“We are training clinicians to understand what health means and that preferences vary by culture,” says Dr. Sharonne Hayes, director, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Mayo Clinic. “The idea is that we are treating diverse populations and each individual in them. The tendency is to treat populations as market segments – we are customizing care to the culture and then further to the individual.”

Cultural-competence training is key for healthcare providers, notes Clift. “We have already required all of our internal clinicians to complete cultural-competency courses. Training is around attitudes and how patients actually may have trust issues with providers,” she says.

Jimenez has a good example from WellPoint: Its Latino resource group, SOMOS, has been encouraging healthcare providers to emphasize family care as opposed to individual care. Latino parents, she says, will go out of their way to provide preventive care for their children but are far less inclined to do it for themselves. WellPoint is No. 34 in the DiversityInc Top 50.

The Affordable Care Act also requires hospitals to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.  Hawkins notes that having a workforce representative of the new marketplace is a big plus for Lilly as it expands its clinical trials. “The patient population we serve is more likely to connect with customers from a sales standpoint,” says Hawkins.

Deep relationships with community organizations developed by companies that are diversity leaders is paying off in efforts to promote wellness and connect with the expanded patient base. Lilly has worked with organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and the Urban League on wellness programs in areas such as depression.

The end result for these companies is the diversity-management strategies that they have put in place are helping them negotiate this brave new world of healthcare accountability and expanded patient populations. Diversity management is critical to their very survival, they all say.

“Everyone is realizing how important diversity and inclusion is in the course of business,” says Health Care Service Corporation’s Clift.

–Barbara Frankel, with Robyn Heller Gerbush and Stacy Straczynski

The post Hospitals, Insurance Companies, Pharmas: Who Benefits From the Affordable Care Act? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Read Diversity Drives Cleveland’s Economic Development in the digital issue of DiversityInc magazine.

A recent Brookings Institute report found Cleveland is on the road to resurgence, ranking 10th among 50 U.S. metro areas. That’s because of its diversification from a primarily industrial base to “new economy” sectors, such as healthcare, biosciences and high-tech industries. Based on annual employment growth and per-capita income, the study found Cleveland’s income jumped 4.1 percent from 2009 to 2010 compared with pre-recession years (1993–2007).

What’s prompting change in the city of Cleveland (population 430,000) and surrounding areas? One factor is the leadership commitment to provide opportunities for all, including the nearly 60 percent Black and Latino population in the metro area (Census Bureau), as the Cleveland Group Plan Commission rolls out an aggressive revitalization plan that includes a new 100,000-square-foot Cleveland Medical Mart and adjoining 230,000-square-foot convention center, a $700-million downtown casino and more.

Cleveland Economic Development: Build It and Jobs Will Come

Cleveland’s capital-improvement projects and the area’s low cost of living (almost 4 percent less than the national average, reports Greater Cleveland Partnership are spurring jobs and attracting businesses and “creative” thinkers from major metro areas such as New York. When coupled with the leadership commitment to diversity and the investment in emerging sectors, Cleveland is poised for potential growth.

A welcoming environment and opportunity to make a significant difference lured Dr. Marilyn Sanders Mobley back to Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), where she earned her Ph.D. in English. Three years ago, she was among 136 applying for CWRU’s vice president for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity, and was appointed by President Barbara R. Snyder, who sits on Greater Cleveland Partnership’s board, to the elevated, cabinet-level position.

“I saw it as an opportunity to do diversity the right way,” says Mobley, adding that the number of Blacks, Latinos and other underrepresented undergrads at CWRU rose four percentage points over the past year. “Had the job reported to HR, I wouldn’t have taken it.”

Since coming on board a year ago, she has built a robust diversity program, thanks to Greater Cleveland Partnership’s guidance and recognition, including the formation of a diversity-leadership council and supplier-diversity initiative council; launching a faculty diversity-awareness lecture series sponsored by local corporations such as KeyCorp rolling out a pipeline initiative with John Hay High School that provides a free ride to qualifying underrepresented students who strive to go to medical school; and working one-on-one with multicultural student groups “to make the university a more welcoming environment.” Soon to come: a train-the-diversity-champion program, which includes an LGBT-inclusive SafeZone component, and CWRU’s strategic diversity-action plan.

“Inclusive excellence is the key to remaining competitive, not only in our field of higher education but also in creating the kind of workplace environment where individuals can thrive and develop their full potential in the Greater Cleveland business community as contributors and change agents,” she says.

Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson, who took office five years ago, also returned to the city after serving in the U.S. Army. Now, under Jackson’s leadership and with input from thousands of Clevelanders, the “Connecting Cleveland 2020 Citywide Plan” has been created to serve as a regional blueprint.

It calls to improve the quality of life in Cleveland’s 36 neighborhoods and lays out targeted strategies that include diversity. The plan “proposes that the city fully embrace its diversity, cultivate it, nurture it and market it as a key element of its revitalization strategy,” the report states.

Power in Numbers: Cleveland’s Diversity & Inclusion Creates Economic Development

Greater Cleveland Partnership built a unique all-volunteer program in 2000 called the Commission on Economic Inclusion, a broad-based coalition of more than 100 northeast Ohio employers committed to making the region’s diversity a source of economic strength. The organization boasts a combined member workforce of nearly 200,000 in northeast Ohio and more than 575,000 employees throughout the United States. Its goals include:

1. Supplier Diversity
Growing regional minority-owned business enterprises (MBEs) through access to capital, workshops and a business matchmaking program that has secured more than 54 deals, worth $131.6 million.

2. Workforce Recruitment
Increasing access to well-paying jobs for all through, among other initiatives, the Diversity Professionals Group that meets quarterly to share metrics and other best practices.

3. Retention and Leadership Development 
Including more Blacks, Latinos, Asians and other underrepresented groups in senior management and board leadership roles by providing diversity training, seminars and conferences.

Through formalized relationships with member CEOs, chief diversity officers and C-suite executives “who make decisions,” says Greater Cleveland Partnership’s Senior Director of Inclusion Initiatives Dr. Deborah A. Bridwell, “the commission has been helping members achieve their diversity and inclusion goals.”

In addition to holding two CEO briefings last year, each attended by more than 40 member CEOs, Bridwell and Andrew Jackson, senior vice president and executive director of the Commission on Economic Inclusion, point to the success of their inaugural “Senior Executive Forum.” Co-hosted by the national real-estate company Forest City Enterprises and keynoted by DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti, they say it has signifi cantly strengthened local leadership buy-in with 45 senior executives attending.

“The forum helped us connect with C-level executives who oversee and maintain change efforts within their organizations and hold others
accountable to achieve results,” says Jackson, a former consultant at Accenture. And Visconti “delivered a thoughtful and energizing keynote address that combined research on current and future business trends with a message about the business value of maximizing diversity and inclusion within an organization. He also praised and encouraged our region for its attention to these issues and related opportunities.”

Solidifying their commitment, each new member is asked to sign an agreement promising to fi ll out the commission’s annual diversity survey, designate a senior staffer responsible for diversity-and-inclusion efforts, implement a formal method for tracking supplier-diversity spend with MBEs, and more. The result of this deep-seated investment is reflected in the commission’s most-recent 2009 Employers Survey on Diversity, which polled 98 member employers and found:

Cleveland’s Economic Development Shows Commitment to Supplier Diversity 

“We have informed and enlightened leaders—and that’s critical,” says Margot James Copeland, KeyCorp’s executive vice president, corporate diversity and philanthropy, and chair of KeyBank Foundation. A longtime supporter of local and national economic empowerment, Copeland was instrumental in the formation of the commission and today sits on its oversight committee, where she shares her company’s core diversity values and networks with fellow members. KeyCorp has been repeatedly recognized by Greater Cleveland Partnership for board diversity as well as supplier diversity.

Diversity “helps us create sustainable relationships,” says Henry L. Meyer III, former chairman and CEO, who retired May 1. “These relationships support our reinvestment in the community and support our attempt to create an inclusive and collaborative environment that helps our businesses and communities grow and prosper. Our membership in the Commission on Economic Inclusion reflects our commitment to the economic strength of northeast Ohio and all of its citizens.”

For example, the Cleveland-based financial institution has made a $2-million philanthropic investment in Cuyahoga Community College (also known as Tri-C), a commission member recognized in 2007 for its workforce diversity and in 2008 for its senior management diversity. “The college is an extraordinary asset to our community,” says Copeland. Tri-C’s diversity program, under the direction of Judi McMullen, vice president of human resources, and Andre Burton, director of diversity and inclusion, is comprehensive. The multi-campus college offers education opportunities to a diverse slate of students—roughly 39 percent are Black, Latino or from other underrepresented groups, while 62 percent are women.

To further increase retention/graduation rates and help break down racial barriers, the college launched its Minority Male Initiative (MMI) last year, which includes mentoring, tutoring, fi eld trips, mock interviews and more. Thanks in part to the efforts of its diversity recruitment committee, Tri-C’s 3,000 employees are 29 percent Black, Latino or Asian. Similarly, its tenure-track faculty searches yield an underrepresented applicant pool averaging between 20 and 29 percent, above average for faculty searches nationally.

Recently, with construction projects on the drawing board or under way, in addition to ongoing campus-wide initiatives, the college has focused on supplier diversity and set a subcontracting target of 15 percent minority-owned business enterprises, 5 percent women-owned business enterprises and 3 percent veteran-owned vendors. “I’m happy to report that, so far, we have been hitting those targets thanks to our outreach efforts,” says Burton, noting Tri-C’s supplier-diversity workshops for creating business plans, preparing bonds and other capacity-building tools.

“We try to weave diversity and inclusion into everything we do,” says McMullen. “That’s when we know we’ve been successful—when diversity just comes naturally.”

Also pivotal to the region’s supplier-diversity success is repeatedly recognized commission member Cleveland Clinic, which is on The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems list. The nonprofit academic healthcare system, with a workforce of 42,000, operates nine community hospitals and 15 family health centers in northeast Ohio, in addition to facilities nationwide and globally. Currently under construction and scheduled to open in late 2011 is its $25-million, 50,000-square-foot Huron Community Health Center. Acknowledged as an opportunity to generate jobs in Cleveland’s underserved communities, the clinic set an MBE subcontracting goal of 30 percent for this project and is on track to hit 40 percent MBE participation in the project overall.

“We view our work as an opportunity to lead the rest of Cleveland,” says Chief Community Relations & Diversity Officer Dr. Anthony Stallion.” As organizations like ours are able to fully realize their commitment to diversity and inclusion, our patients benefi t and all of Greater Cleveland benefits.”

The clinic reached supplier-diversity procurement of nearly 30 percent on the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center completed last year.

By holding matchmaker events, collaborating with external partners and hosting vendor meet-and-greets, the clinic is effectively connecting with existing MBEs. It also helps potential MWBEs grow their size/scale to do business with Cleveland Clinic through numerous partner projects—including the Greater Cleveland Partnership Commission’s Minority Business Accelerator 2.5+—as well as supports workforce-development programs to increase the number of Black, Latino, women and other underrepresented laborers in the clinic’s capital-improvement projects.

“There are people and organizations in Cleveland that are making a difference through diversity,” says Bridwell, “and Cleveland Clinic is working hard at it.”

Creating Inclusion: Cleveland’s Diversity & Inclusion Leadership

The civic-minded leadership at Forest City Enterprises, which has called Cleveland home for the past 90 years, is also making a difference, notes Bridwell. Six years ago, the company appointed its first director of diversity and inclusion, Charmaine Brown, “to put more skin in the game,” she says. An active member on the commission’s membership impact committee—along with co-chairs Forest City President and CEO Charles Ratner and Cleveland State University Vice President of Advancement Steven Minter—Brown quickly expanded her diversity role.

With Greater Cleveland Partner’s guidance, she shifted the focus from workforce equality only to change agent of “every component of the organization.” This included kicking off a strategic diversity plan for 2012–2015 with new leadership. She says, “We have engaged in a data project to get more accurate and validated information on our supplier-diversity efforts as a company. We are currently in the process of hiring a vice president of procurement.”

Consider Forest City’s 83-year-old Co-Chairman Albert Ratner, who is deeply committed to creating a welcoming environment in Cleveland. The son of a Polish immigrant, he realizes the value of recruiting the newly arrived to a region with a shortage of skilled labor. Along with other local executives, such as Cleveland Clinic’s and Huntington National Bank’s, he has laid the foundation for the city’s fi rst International Welcome Center.

Its mission: to help transition skilled international workers into northeast Ohio’s economy and community. If the region cannot lure high-skilled immigrants, he told the press, “We will continue to decline. We will become poorer and poorer, and more and more of our children will leave.” Since Forest City builds neighborhoods, it knows “the hot spots are the places that have immigrants,” he said. And thanks to a recent planning grant of $50,000, Cleveland State University (CSU), in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, is leading the center’s effort.

For more than two decades, CSU has creating a welcoming campus climate. Through a university-wide diversity strategy directed by Vice President for Institutional Diversity Dr. Njeri Nuru-Holm, CSU’s program includes multicultural curriculum, equality in hiring and promotion and increased retention/graduation rates among underserved students. Nuru-Holm completed a comprehensive Diversity in Action Plan last year with a representative, 21-member, president-appointed Council on Diversity “to ensure that diversity is integral to excellence in access, opportunity and success at the University,” states the plan. CSU offers a broad spectrum of more than 100 courses with a cultural/ethnic focus as well as a diversity-management program for its more than 17,000 students.

This has helped attract multicultural students, many of them first-generation college students. In 2009, 24 percent were Black, Latino or Asian, while 26 percent of faculty members and 31 percent of staff members were from underrepresented groups. (CSU has been repeatedly recognized by GCP for its workforce diversity.) CSU has produced the highest percentage of Black graduates in various disciplines in Ohio for more than 20 years.

To continue to increase student retention and graduation rates, support is key, says Nuru-Holm. “It’s one thing to get them in the door, but it’s another to retain them,” she says. For example, student services include the AHANA Peer Mentoring Program, designed to engage incoming Black, Latino, Asian and American Indian freshmen both academically and socially. Similarly, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Alliance (GLASA) and LGBT Student Services work in concert and are active, organized and visible. “They feel they have a voice here,” says Nuru-Holm. Support through cultural-competency training and education is also available, including CSU’s free Leadership Forum on Diversity series for students, educators and the public.

Diversity and inclusion are core value at Columbus, Ohio–based Huntington Bancshares. “We are committed to attracting and retaining individuals from a variety of backgrounds, with a variety of characteristics and attributes,” says Steve Steinour, chairman, president and CEO of Huntington, which operates more than 600 branches in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. “But we realize that diversity in and of itself doesn’t advance our mission. To keep winning as a growth organization, we need to be more open and actively welcome the unique way of thinking that every colleague has to offer.”

Huntington has refocused its efforts on diversity, and in January 2011, the company appointed Traci Dunn as senior vice president, inclusion director. “This journey is focused on building an inclusive culture,” says Dunn. “It brings out the best in each of us. It enables us to drive innovation to improve the customer experience in all the ways they expect but most importantly all of the ways that exceed their expectations. Our unifi ed approach to inclusion enables us to provide an inclusion lens to our talent processes as well as our business practices.”

In Greater Cleveland, Huntington supports the Global Cleveland Initiative and Welcome Center. This initiative is about attracting talented people to the area—whether they are from other parts of the country or other parts of the world. The center connects them to opportunities in the community, Dunn says.

In addition, Huntington partners with the Minority Business Assistance Center of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland and the Cleveland Small Business Development Center to sponsor Huntington National Bank Days at the Urban League. These events enable minority-owned business enterprises direct access to business bankers to discuss their current and future financial needs. Huntington is currently the fourth-largest SBA lender in the country by number of loans, Dunn says.

“The ultimate goal of this cultural shift is to create a workforce of top talent that is inclusive and refl ects the communities we serve,” says Keith Sanders, executive vice president and human-resources director at Huntington. “When it all comes together, Huntington becomes an even better place to work and grow professionally.”

Shaping Diversity & Inclusion Strategies, Economic Development in Cleveland

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland launched its most recent diversity and inclusion initiative in 2006 by conducting an extensive “diversity culture audit” that included interviews with senior executives, focus-group sessions, one-on-one interviews, a review of policies and practices, and a bank-wide survey. A multi-year strategic plan was developed, according to Diana Starks, assistant vice president and diversity officer in the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) at the Cleveland Fed. She says the results of a second survey were recently discussed with senior bank leadership and will help to shape diversity and inclusion strategies for the next three-year period.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is one of 12 Reserve banks within the Federal Reserve System. It contributes to the formulation of U.S. monetary policy, monitors economic and fi nancial conditions in the region, and regulates banks within its territory, which includes Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and the northern portion of West Virginia.

Starks says there are three components of the Cleveland Fed’s diversity and inclusion journey. “We are aggressively working to have an inclusive environment. We are creating a workplace that is representative of the communities in which we live and do business and is consistent with the applicable job market, and we want to gain a reputation of having a diverse and inclusive environment,” she says.

The bank conducts training and education for the entire workforce to raise and enhance awareness and build cultural competence for individuals and teams. Starks says the bank has a robust supplier-diversity program that has facilitated new business relationships with small and minority-owned businesses and has enhanced its community-outreach initiatives.

According to Starks, Sandra Pianalto, the president and chief executive officer of the Cleveland Fed, demonstrates her commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace through her leadership, working with her executive team to advance the bank’s diversity and inclusion strategies, attending and participating in various dialogue sessions with staff, and through her community involvement and engagement.

Developing Cleveland’s Network for Diversity & Inclusion

Another notable GCP commission member is University Hospitals, a healthcare system that includes a major academic medical center; community hospitals; outpatient, urgent-care, cancer, rehabilitation and pediatric centers; and mental-health facilities. The organization—in The DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems and recognized for its work/life benefits—launched its diversity council several years ago.

“We realize that University Hospitals can enhance the way we treat and serve the surrounding community through initiatives and employees that are reflective of the region’s diverse population,” states CEO Thomas F. Zenty III. “A spirit of inclusion is crucial to patient care and our clinical research. Our board of trustees, led by the Cultural Diversity Committee of the Board, understands that a coalition of caring staff is required to integrate diversity into every aspect of our organization, so that all patients and staff members—regardless of their background—will feel at home.”

Today, University Hospitals (UH) has a 10-member council whose goals include building partnerships with the MWBEs in greater Cleveland; ensuring a multicultural group of administrative leaders; and recruiting and retaining a talented pool of faculty and other healthcare professionals from underrepresented groups, states the University Hospitals diversity report. As a result of this, the Minority House Staff Organization and other pipeline initiatives, 13 percent of UH’s house staff physicians are Black, Latino or Asian, up from 2 percent a few decades ago. UH has also increased the percentage of underrepresented groups on its board to 28 percent and made a $1.2-billion investment in the community’s fi nancial health.

GCP member Cleveland Public Library (CPL) has also made significant strides in the areas of workforce and supplier diversity under the guidance of the commission and committed leadership. Since his arrival from the Las Vegas public library system in 2008, Director Felton Thomas Jr. has been instrumental in helping to increase CPL’s annual supplier-diversity spend by 20 percent. With capital improvements slated for the main library, “we’ve been working with the commission’s vendor list to fi nd diverse suppliers,” he says. In addition, “half of our staff [of about 700] is people of color.

Management is 30 percent and the executive team is 33 percent.” Thomas describes the CPL as a “community defi cit fi ghter” and has initiated more multicultural programming. This includes a partnership book program with the Slovenian Museum & Archives and the Consulate General of the Republic of Slovenia (Northeast Ohio is home to the largest Slovene community outside of Slovenia); a free summer lunch program that delivered 20,000 meals to at-risk children this past summer, in partnership with the city of Cleveland and the Children’s Hunger Alliance; and ongoing GED, ESL and U.S. citizenship courses. Soon to come: educational classes for people who have recently been released from prisons.

“We’re becoming a learning lab,” he says, “and making a more educated community.” The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, another GCP member previously honored for senior-management diversity, is contributing to the region’s cultural and economic strength as well. The organization is helping to draw the “creative class” to northern Ohio, as one of the biggest tourist attractions. Since opening in 1995, the museum has welcomed more than 7.5 million visitors and drove more than $1.5 billion to the regional economy.

“Any city that wants to make sure it’s positioned for the 21st century,” says KeyCorp’s Copeland, “must make sure the fabric is culturally, economically and socially diverse.”

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