About the Alliance

National Minority Quality Forum is concerned that the American health services delivery and financing system lacks the policy infrastructure to promote collaboration among the neurologic, psychiatric, and physical health specialists and subspecialists whose expertise must be brought to bear to ensure best outcomes for patients with brain-involved health challenges.

National Minority Quality Forum has established the National Alliance for Brain Health and Awareness (NABHA) in recognition of the need for collaboration across the domains of brain health to design and implement initiatives regarding the prevalence of brain diseases and the assurance of quality health services for individuals with brain disease.

The National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. The mission of NMQF is to reduce patient risk by assuring optimal care for all. NMQF’s vision is an American health services research, delivery and financing system whose operating principle is to reduce patient risk for amenable morbidity and mortality while improving quality of life.

NMQF’s capabilities include federal and state policy analysis and advocacy; issue-specific alliance development; community-based provider quality improvement initiatives, and data analytics. Over the last twenty years, the Forum has created a data warehouse of over 1 billion patient records that can be linked by ZIP code, has published articles in scientific health journals, and led policy education programming with public and private sector policy leaders, including elected and appointed officials.

The objective of the NABHA is to facilitate educational efforts regarding policies, regulations and access models that are supportive of a 21st century re-envisioning of a health system that reduces patient risk and sustains the health and well-being of families and communities. NABHA will increase awareness and understanding of the prevalence of brain diseases in communities and population cohorts throughout the country, and educate critical stakeholders about the quality standards, and policies that serve to advance the adoption of effective, precision medicine to treat brain disease and support brain health.

Factors that create an imperative for a multi-disciplinary focus on brain health include:

• The need to improve the content of the care provided in all settings;
• The lack of population-centric evidence-based standards of care for patients with brain diseases;
• The need to assure that access models not create disincentives for quality improvement;
• The aging of the baby-boomer cohort, coupled with improved diagnosis of some brain diseases, which is triggering increased demand in all care settings; and
• The imperative that all health and awareness initiatives be imbued with the values of equity and social justice.

Accordingly, NABHA membership recruitment efforts focus on organizations that have a vested interest in improving the quality and availability of health services to prevent, diagnose and reduce patient risk associated with brain diseases, including patient advocacy organizations, industry, clinicians and caregivers, and academic and community-based researchers.