EMERGE Everywhere

Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee: Advancing Health Equity in the Workplace

Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee has spent her career working to solve social disparities in the healthcare space. Today, the Chief Health Officer at Accenture is one of the most respected health leaders in the country. In this episode of EMERGE Everywhere, Jennifer sits down with Dr. Tam to talk about the pandemic’s effect on the medical community, how to approach healthcare from both a community and employee perspective, and the steps to create a more equitable healthcare system.

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Guests

Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee

Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee

Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee has spent her career working to solve social disparities in the healthcare space. Today, the Chief Health Officer at Accenture is one of the most respected health leaders in the country. In this episode of EMERGE Everywhere, Jennifer sits down with Dr. Tam to talk about the pandemic’s effect on the medical community, how to approach healthcare from both a community and employee perspective, and the steps to create a more equitable healthcare system.

Learn more about Dr. Tam’s work and check out additional episodes of EMERGE Everywhere.

Episode Transcript

Jen Tescher:
For most of her life, Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee has worked to solve social disparities in the healthcare space, quickly becoming known as one of the most respected health leaders in the country. She is a self-described “evangelist for health equity,” working with community and business leaders to enable people to live healthier and happier lives – physically, mentally, and financially. A few months ago, Dr. Tam – as some people call her – took on her largest role yet as the first-ever Chief Health Officer at Accenture, giving her a new opportunity to tackle health and well-being in the workplace. Dr. Tam, welcome to EMERGE Everywhere.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jen.

Jen Tescher:
So, after 17 years, as a clinician, as a doctor in family medicine, you are now the first chief health officer at Accenture, the global consulting firm. We’re starting to see more and more companies create CHO roles in the midst of this pandemic. So tell us, what does a chief health officer do?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Well for Accenture, the chief health officer is charged with innovating and accelerating strategies to improve health and wellness for all of our people who globally, which is now approaching about 700,000 people, including their families and in the communities that we serve. It spans the gamut of all the things that you would imagine a chief health officer would do from a clinical and medical perspective. But certainly, the pandemic has, I think, elevated the opportunity for us to think about health holistically and attend to the things that matter most to people so that they can do their best at work.

Jen Tescher:
Well, certainly folks in HR or talent who have to administer say health insurance benefits have been thinking along these lines for quite some time, but, but your role is different than a traditional head of HR as an example. So how do, how do, how do the, how do the portfolios get split apart, right? Where do you stop and start versus HR?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
That’s a great question. I probably would answer by saying that I don’t know that there are very bright lines that ends the work, say, of someone who’s in charge of benefits for a particular population and my role it’s actually rather continuous. And, and I love that. It’s distinguished by the fact that my primary accountability isn’t solely around benefits, how our claims are performing. For example, with certain insurer, am I measured by the percentage of diabetics we have in our firm or how well they’re doing in that condition, but it’s more so being a bit more creative and innovative and thinking about where physical health is, one dimension of it, how to get to a place where we might be able to quantify actually a measure of health and wellbeing for our people that is more meaningful and actionable and translatable to, for our organization, delivering on our promise, which is about bringing, you know, human ingenuity and, and technology together. I think it would be the same for any organization. So it’s multi-pronged, it’s physical health, it’s mental health, it’s emotional health, relational health, and even thinking about the impact of work from a very quantitative and qualitative perspective on a person’s wellbeing.

Jen Tescher:
I love this sort of quantified self-perspective that you’re thinking about taking. What do you think employees think about this new kind of role? Do you think I’m sure you’re still building up your team and educating, you know, such a large workforce, but how do they relate to it? Do you think?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
I think very positively, I’ve been in my role exactly six months today. And I was reflecting early this morning, like what’s happened in the, in the past six months, in addition to being in the midst of helping a large team navigate two big surges within the COVID nineteen pandemic so that we can make sure that our, our people are safe, but also attended to, as, as people were affected directly and indirectly by the pandemic. I was also remarking to myself about the overwhelming interest within the organization globally on wanting to understand why is my role here? The number of people that have reached out intentionally to say, I don’t know what you do, but I am so glad that you are here because it demonstrates to our people the strong commitment that the organization has to pay attention to their wellbeing in a great way.

The unique thing is that because of the pandemic, I have had a very unusual and accelerated platform to interact with many of our people globally, many of whom haven’t met, but they know who I am because they’ve heard my voice in talking about how to stay safe, the nuances of the variance and the like. It’s caused us to be endeared to one another because they understand that my motivation is about any other metric, except that they’re well, so it’s been very positive. And even when I’ve extended the opportunity for individuals to tell me the opportunities, what are the barriers so far? What are the challenges that they’re seeing? What could we do better? They are transparent. They’re candid. And they’re encouraging that myself and the team that’s around me and that I’m building can actually get there. So it’s been generally extremely positive, and people are very excited about what’ll come out of our strategy, right? 

Jen Tescher:
You sound like the Dr. Fauci of Accenture.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
In a way, I would say so with the exception of, I would say that I, I love that I can talk about other things besides COVID-19.

Jen Tescher:
And you don’t have to testify before Congress, at least not yet.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Exactly. Exactly.

Jen Tescher:
So it’s, you know, I, I, we’re on video for this, and I can see that you are working from your home in St. Louis. I imagine that means that most of your peers at Accenture, most of the workforce at Accenture is still at home. And, you know, given that the purview of the chief health officer is so broad, right? It’s not just physical health, full wellbeing. I would imagine that you’ve had a role to play in the company’s thinking around return to work, or if there’s ever a return, what does the future look like? How have health and wellbeing considerations been folded in, if you will, to those conversations? What impact are they having?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
You’re absolutely right. To the credit, I would say of our executive leadership from our CEO, Julie Sweet, the chief human resources and talent officer for the organization, our leader officer who’s my boss, Ellyn Shook. They have had an extraordinary vision about what the future of work would look like. Even predating the pandemic. This current executive leadership team came into place in the fall of 2019. So they were rather prescient in thinking about how are people working? What are the ways that they’re working that could actually lead to the greatest productivity and also contribute to them being well? So, there was extraordinary work that was led by my people leader, Ellyn Shook, that actually took a look at all the job roles and classifications and took a hard look to say, look, our people want flexibility. So let’s take a look at every role and see what is the requirement, for example, to be on the road, to be outside out of the home and balance that with needing to be with peers and clients in order for them to have meaning and purpose in work and actually deliver client value.

So all of that work happened just as the pandemic was being launched. So where it forced and accelerated a big movement of people to be working from home, a strong majority for safety purposes, there was also like an organic right-sizing that happened of people appreciating the flexibility. You know, it’s not been easy for everyone where, yeah. At least I’ll speak for myself. I’m in a place of privilege, you know, or I have a home that’s a dedicated office and I can be quiet and uninterrupted, but that’s not the, you know, the testimony I would say of, of all of our employees. So really understanding what it will take was given a lot of thought. Our CEO terms it as our omni-connectedness or omni-connected future of work, which really requires that in addition to our virtual reality, that currently exists.

There’s another dimension that we’ll also lean into and that’s the metaverse, but the importance of us coming back together. So even for people, for example, who had never been in an office in say a decade, the expectation moving forward when it’s safe to do so, is that we will be in community together, even if it’s for a quarterly or semi-annual meeting, event, training because of the power of being with people. I think that we have a lot to learn. And, and I think the influence of the youngest generation in our workforce Gen Z had a lot to do with it as well. I think they came into the game, I think, asking for flexibility and wanting to prioritize also environments that feed themselves and their wellbeing and their mental health. So it caused us to take a notice. I, I think certainly in the many, many conversations that I’ve been in about the future of work, since I’ve joined those nuances, I keep bringing back to the top that, to be honest, I like this, you know, and there are many of us that like this, so why not capitalize on it?

Not only for the low hanging fruit, I think obvious realizations of savings for cost and travel and, you know, we’re more productive, but also because there, there is meaning, I think, in being able to respond to the ways that people want to work and you’re actually able to get more out of them.

Jen Tescher:
Hmm. So I mentioned already that you spent nearly two decades as a practicing doctor, but right before you joined Accenture, you actually were – I think it’s fair to call you an administrator – at a very large health system Ascension. And if I understand it correctly, you were the chief community impact officer. So you were really thinking about how to improve healthcare outcomes at the community level. And now you’re in a different community, if you will, a community of workers. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about the similarities and differences in those two areas of focus and ultimately what’s really needed to make the biggest difference for workers? How do you, how do you bring that community perspective?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Sure. There are surprisingly, I didn’t even realize it as I was making the leap a lot of parallels between the work I did with Ascension. And now at Accenture,

Jen Tescher:
They even kind of sound alike. I hadn’t realize that until now.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
They do, you’re right. I have to catch myself on occasion, but the pleasure I had in my role at Ascension as the chief community impact officer was to holistically think about how, as a healthcare delivery system, we would achieve the goals of improving health in the various communities that we served. And we were a large organization in nearly 20 states and so very different communities that we were serving and addressing the things that matter most and identifying the levers that actually impact health more so organically healthcare systems and healthcare deliveries will zoom in on healthcare quality and access because that’s our superpower. And that’s what we do. And a great portion of money. GDP is a portion to that. But the rest of the pie where healthcare access and quality is only 10%, the rest of the pie of what impacts health is pretty significant.

If you think about the other domains of economics and environment and the like, so I had, it was actually quite refreshing to think about improving health of populations, but also paying attention to where they lived, where they worked, where they played, where they prayed as being factors to impacting that health and coming up with both micro and macro solutions and interventions to test that, even though we can so explicitly impact the healthcare access part, we could also have a big influence on the others either directly or in partnership. 

Jen Tescher:
Could you give an example maybe of something that you tested when you were in that role? 

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Absolutely. The strategy that we created for work was in three areas. One was looking at how social factors, as I mentioned, you know, where people lived, the neighborhood, the built environment, their social context actually impacted their ability to access care.

So we would take a look at, for example, the proximity, the healthcare delivery sites, pharmacies seeing specialists, the transportation routes to be able to get there and tried to build that in into our algorithms for treating people that was more culturally sensitive to the communities that we were serving. The second pillar was about community engagement. It that social and community context domain about, you know, the determinants of health was so big. And we really got tested during the pandemic that we doubled down on our strategies for reaching the various populations, whether it was urban, rural, the various dimensions, even religious dimensions, so that we can actually improve access to care for people who had actually been directly affected by COVID in terms of the disease, as well as vaccination, that foundational work, which is some of the last things I had a chance to engage in with Ascension was so critical for us to improve the community immunization rates, where, where we had delivery sites throughout the country and our own people.

I think what’s really, and this is kind of the translation, I think, to Accenture, that the eye-opening experience of in, in high humbling experience that we all had of living through a pandemic and realizing that it’s no respect of persons, is that you can think about who you’re serving. So the patients, these are consumers, depending on what industry you’re in, but it would definitely behoove a business to take a look to the right and left to with people you’re serving alongside because who you’re serving and the things, the impacts that they’re experiencing is likely to be experienced by the people you’re serving alongside. And when we saw the vaccine inquisitiveness, for example, among the people, you know, who are our frontline staff and their families, we said, boy, you know, we’re, we’re gonna miss it. If we don’t do a work here, because they were part of the communities that we were serving and reaching and they were representing.

And so that work was rather pivotal and, and that we, you know, it was a good test community engagement, establish the trust, lean in on what matters most people need testing. So let’s bring testing to them, for example, to seniors or vaccines, rather than creating this big old hub, you know, where you are requiring people to take two buses, you know, to come to why not go directly to them in their backyard and bring your vaccines to them and people who are from the community to talk about their fears, their questions, their concerns about the development about its side effects and its efficacy. So that was really, really powerful at Accenture. It’s a similar, I think, realization that, especially when you’re thinking about a global population, you have to really think about what matters most. Here in the states, we have a way of thinking about health that is rather segmented.

I think we think about our mind differently than our bodies and differently than we think about our soul, not universally, but it’s kind of how our healthcare system works. Not the same if I’m going to think about our population in India, which makes up nearly half of our population globally. So the ability for translating being sensitive to the context and, and realizing that those social determinants are universal across the globe in terms of wanting to affect health and change. And I’m really leading on that every chance we get and with my Western mind that, you know, our organization, isn’t Western only. So being specific where standard we, but being differentiated, where it’s necessary also in order to get to the outcomes that we’re looking for.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. You know, I know you have tremendous passion for addressing health equity issues and it’s formed a big part of your career. And it’s so interesting to think about it in the context you just described at a much more macro level between different nations and cultures, as opposed to the more narrow way it’s been socially constructed in a place like the United States. And the other thing that I think about now that you’re in an employer context is particularly in the world of HR, the last many decades, the approach has been much more of a blind approach, right? In order to be fair, gotta offer everyone the same thing. And we’re now in a very different moment in this country as a result of this racial reckoning. And I think more and more people are appreciating that we need to meet people where they are and give each person what he or she might need to have the opportunity to reach the same outcome. I’m wondering how you are working to translate that idea into a workplace where these ideas haven’t necessarily caught up with the broader discussion we’re having around the country.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Yes, it’s challenging to find a direct line. I think for translating what equity looks like in us and healthcare delivery to, you know, large, robust, and still growing professional services organization with a global footprint. But I will say too, I’ll answer it in two ways. First, the organization has already had a pretty strong commitment to inclusion and diversity as it took a look at its population from gender, as well as race and ethnicity, to make sure that that’s represented the multiculturalism that exists in this organization is quite phenomenal. And it, leadership has recognized the opportunities. I’ll call it to be more inclusive in all its ranks, but particularly in leadership. Our CEOs really made some very bold goals towards gender equity in leadership in our organization that should be accomplished within the next two to three years.

And I think the game-changer has been the transparency on that performance, as well as the goals. That was the model we were saying in the healthcare space. That until it is an intention from the very highest levels of the organization and governance with discreet goals and transparency and accountability, it’s not really real. And the opportunity that I’ve seen within Accenture is reflecting all of those, the intentionality from the senior leadership governance, setting the goal, and having accountability and transparency reflected throughout. I think the demand mention that I’m bringing and thinking about the health and wellness of our organization is, I’ll take it domestically, is also thinking about like even the, in the United States where we have people represented in just about every state. It’s extremely different culturally in terms of how we think about our benefits, what people will need most, I’ll give one example related to physical health and it has to do with the space of oncology.

So, you know, this is an area where employers tend to be generous, you know, when it comes to the care of their, their people in, from the place of prevention to the place of treatment, when there’s a, a diagnosis, what is out of the reach though of employers is where a person lives has a big difference as to whether or not you have access to the eating practices and, and the like of, of getting care. So we’re starting to take a look at that and launching programs whereby we’re able to say, how might we be able to extend the best of where we have these care paths, these care treatments, even the providers themselves, to all our people within the United States, either in direct care or in consultation and spread broadly and not pass on that cost to our people, but actually take it because that’s the equity play that we can have towards that end. And I think it’s powerful and, and I’m really excited about what else we can do it. I think it becomes more obvious when you think about it internationally, just because of the different structures, geographies, resources, you know, that different countries will have, but that the, that there is awareness and accountability towards that end is the agenda that I’m ready to set. 

Jen Tescher:
So where does this passion come from? You know, you have been in healthcare pretty much all your life in one way, shape or form or another, what, what led you down that path in the first place?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
That’s a great question. II would start by saying my mom for certain, she is a medical technologist, so has worked in a lab. She’s that person who when a sample is given, you know, either in a doctor’s office, in a hospital is, is behind the scenes running it to make sure that those are well. And she started her career as a nurse actually, didn’t like it and preferred the laboratory science part of it. But I think going to the lab with her and seeing her answer questions and leading teams kind of inspired me quite a bit to say, “Hey, let’s do something here in this space.” I was always drawn, I think, to these very noble aspirations of like wanting to help people and, and making the world better. And certainly, I think she imprinted that a lot, I think in terms of where, where my space is now and, and being an evangelist for health equity and, and wanting to enable people to live healthy and well probably came from just reflecting on how I grew up.

My parents are Haitian immigrants, so we didn’t grow up initially with all the resources that were available to us. We were very much dependent as we were getting our legs up on the public health infrastructure for healthcare and the like, and I remember being very much impacted by the care I received. You’ve been wanting to do so much for people who were in similar situations and, and where education and extraordinary opportunities helped to change my trajectory. That’s not the case for everybody. And, but that shouldn’t preclude them from being able to have the best access to, and the best chance of living their dreams, you know, to care for their families or be productive members of society. So that’s where it all came from. And, and I’m grateful for all of it, you know, for the things that were very hard along the way, and the lessons learned.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. So do you miss having patients, you know, actually doing clinical work?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Absolutely. Yes. It was – as a doer, as an achiever – if you take a look at strengths, there’s nothing more gratifying than being able to hear problems and then draw on knowledge, experience content to be able to come up with solutions. And that happens, you know, on a regular basis with seeing patients, the challenge then was thinking about it in terms of populations, you know, and, and I still get a chance to do that, but, but yes, I loved medicine. I loved delivering babies. I loved all the scope of medicine that I did. My last baby that I delivered is turning 12 in a few days. So I remember her fondly, she’s still in my life and I’m really grateful for all of the stories.

Jen Tescher:
Well, I’m also guessing that particularly over these last couple of years, you are the person that friends and family turn to with all of their COVID related questions. And so, even though you may not be a doctor right now in your day job, you are certainly playing one with your friends and family.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Without a doubt. Absolutely.

Jen Tescher:
Well, you know, if we didn’t know it before the pandemic real has made it abundantly clear how health, both physical and mental and financial health are connected and how bidirectional the connection is. How healthcare costs can disrupt financial health and how financial security or financial health impacts physical and mental health outcomes. And I’m curious, how do you think both the healthcare world and also the, you know, the world of employers, how are they thinking differently about these intersections than they were pre-pandemic? And do you think that they are doing or poised to do the right things, to make that those intersections are positive, as opposed to a negative for people?

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
The awareness, I will say of everyone now in the United States of thinking about what are the things that impact health has never been stronger, I would say than ever before it, it predated the pandemic, but certainly the pandemic made it land home for, for everyone. And even the language of the social determinants of health or the social factors of health. I’m, I’m refreshed, tickled, If you will, when I hear, you know, said financial institutions or manufacturing institutions talk about their people, and they’re talking about not only making sure that there is appropriate healthcare access for, you know, the, the people that are serving, but that, they’re also thinking about the other big domains. They’re thinking about the responsibility of economic stability, which can maybe translate to having a true living wage, you know, that’s competitive so that people can then have homes be in neighborhoods that are stable and built educational access in the like, so I’m grateful for this moment, if there’s any positive out of the pandemic.

I think there are a few things we learned. One is the importance of community, you know, in that we are way more interdependent and similar than we could ever have admitted before. And then secondly, is just how fragile we are. When one dimension gets disrupted, it actually affects all the dimensions. So I, I think we’re in a very positive space to that end. And I’m very hopeful that we’ll see more demonstrations of that intersection now, no longer being a tension, but really almost a joining. It’s almost like if you are, if you’re creating something that is to pull, if it’s one strand it’s likely to break, but if it’s three strands, it’ll be stronger and it actually can pull the weight. So where healthcare is meeting with financial services, which is meeting with the public sector, the solutions that can be done to actually impact, for example, housing equity, you know, is amazing. You know, this better than me, but the, the largest debt that people have is related to their housing, right?

It’s mortgages and think about how important it is, where you live to access to education, economic stability, even the number of years that you live and when that’s disrupted, it really causes a collapse, you know, in the communities. And it impacts the, and the like. So, I believe that the, the momentum of strength and awareness of all the interconnectedness is going to both very well for the future. And we’re going to see some really innovative, I think demonstrations of this partnership to come is it’s in part and with great, great enthusiasm that I came aboard to a financial health network as a board member. You probably guess that it’s, it’s an area that’s very passionate for me. And I think very critical as we think about what will it take for people to be well, and it’s all of it. Yeah. To a great degree. Yeah.

Jen Tescher:
I like what you said earlier, it really resonated with me about employers’ and companies needing to look to their right and to their left. And the way I often talk about it is that your worker is my tenant, is her patient. It’s his student, it’s all the same person. We just tend to see that person with our own goggles on or through our own silo. And that if we’re really going to create holistic health for people in every dimension, including financial, we’re gonna have to find ways to join hands and continue to do what we each do best, but to do it in greater coordination, because people don’t live their lives in silos, they live them in a much more holistic way. And, so that language that you used earlier felt, felt fresh and new.

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
Yeah. I’m just astounded, I think by the creativity that’s there. It is vulnerable. You know, if I, if I were to be real and candid about it, to whatever the next thing you know will be. But again, looking at what the pandemic has revealed, we’re going to feel the reverberation, as I believe of the pandemic from our economic, you know, standing to our community standing to our neighborhood standing for some years to come. There are many things that are, are in disarray, even if this were the last variant that we would encounter, let’s knock on what that, that’s the case. So there’ll be great opportunities, I think, for these, these solutions to be generated and, and come aboard and, and help people.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. absolutely. Tam, thank you so much for joining me on emerge everywhere. 

Dr. Duperval-Brownlee:
It’s been my pleasure, Jennifer. Thank you so much.