The World Health Organization and the American Public Health Association define health equity as the concept that everyone has the opportunity to attain their highest level of health or full health potential. The range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors that influence health status and disparities are known as determinants of health. These factors include sex, gender, age, race, ethnicity, culture, geography, policies, socioeconomic factors, and/or the environment. Differences due to these factors are known as health disparities.

NORC has deep expertise conducting research related to health disparities, the social determinants of health, and health equity. Our researchers are skilled in gathering and summarizing reliable data and information on the social determinants of health that contribute to health disparities as well as promising strategies to increase health equity. NORC is adept at recruiting and surveying marginalized and often hard to reach populations, and using qualitative methods to understand health disparities. For example, NORC gathered data to assist the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health manage and evaluate the performance of their funded grant programs, and provide evaluation technical assistance to help grantees better understand outcomes of their interventions to reduce health disparities. NORC has also conducted research on rural health disparities for the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy and other organizations, as well as helped the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Minority Health implement and evaluate the CMS Equity Plan for Improving Quality in Medicare. The CMS Equity Plan is the first plan aimed at improving the quality of care provided to minority and other underserved Medicare populations. Lastly, for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NORC conducted a national survey to understand how Americans think about health, in order to inform efforts to advance a culture of health and health equity, including in public health, health care systems, for-profit corporations, not-for-profit organizations, and schools, among others.