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 discusses  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?”