Shreya Kangovi, MD – Quality Talks 2020

The great divide: There’s often one between high-quality health care and at-risk communities. Dr. Shreya Kangovi knows just how to close that gap, and she knows who might be right for the job. One of your neighbors, perhaps.

Dr. Kangovi strongly prescribes community health workers—trusted laypeople from patients’ community—to close the care gap. She led the design team for IMPaCT, a scalable model for community health worker programs that’s spreading across the country. Health care organizations in 15 states have adopted her model. Among its benefits are that it improves access to care and reduces hospital admissions.

She now leads the Penn Center for Community Health Workers. It aims to smooth access to high-quality care, and you might guess how it works to do that: It conducts research and develops best practices for community health workers. Dr. Kangovi’s remedy, right next door.