Health Equity Measurement: Considerations for Selecting a Benchmark

As states look to advance health equity, they need ways to measure whether their efforts result in improvements. Benchmarking can be used to identify health disparities and establish a standard for evaluating efforts to address health inequities. This issue brief summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of four common approaches to health equity benchmarking and describes the importance of acknowledging the role of societal inequity and structural racism in driving disparities.