Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (“DEI”) is a structural framework that promotes the representation and participation of diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills and expertise within a company culture and the services delivered. DEI promotes anti-racism and is inclusive of people of different ages, races and ethnicities, abilities and disabilities, genders, religions, cultures and sexual orientations. We believe organizations can’t advance on health equity unless you first have DEI embedded into the structure of your organization and the solutions you offer in order to accurately reflect the lived experiences of diverse communities. Onduo and Verily strive to embed principles of employee belonging, a diverse workplace and inclusive products and services into the fabric of our culture.

Health equity work requires an acknowledgment and reconsideration of previously taken for granted beliefs about health (and how it is produced), the health care and public health systems (and how they work), and society (and how it is set up to advantage some and disadvantage others)”.¹ Health equity works to address systems-level change, helping all individuals reach the best possible outcome.

At Verily and Onduo, we believe engaging in DEI work is a prerequisite to health equity.

"Health Equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and healthcare."
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

At Onduo, we’re committed to advancing health equity by:

• Building and sustaining a diverse and inclusive organization.
• Building a diverse and inclusive product and data set that measures the right inputs — including Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) data — so we can contextualize and personalize care.
• Centering care around the patient by using an empathy-based care model, built upon the principle of cultural humility in our engagement with individuals.
• Focusing on doing all of this at scale — so we can partner in creating structural change, lifting up communities in need, and leaving no community behind.

DEI — part of our DNA

Thanks to our Google heritage, we have the right leaders in place to make sure diversity, equity, and inclusion are embedded into our company’s DNA. We apply inclusive design methodology, born out of digital environments, that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Most importantly, this means including and learning from people with a range of perspectives.

“At Onduo we’ve made a conscious effort to design for all communities. We’ve devoted a whole team to examine issues such as inclusivity and we’ve focused on making this part of our quality management process to make sure we haven’t inadvertently left out communities. We take pride in the way that we work with our data science team. We take pride in the way that we work with our artificial intelligence engineers or software engineers to make sure that the design is thoughtful and inclusive.”
-Vindell Washington, MD, MS, CEO, ONDUO

DEI spans many functions within our organization

At Onduo and Verily, we believe it’s important to build a team with lived experiences that reflect those in the communities we’re trying to serve. We do regular assessments throughout Onduo and Verily to ensure that our team building is a reflection of the diverse multicultural, global communities we’re building solutions for. We have different DEI training annually, work streams, and recruiting to ensure continued focus and priority on DEI efforts.

We believe in health equity by design

We’re looking across our data to ensure we work against algorithmic biases. Our data and analytics teams are actively working on ways to increase our DEI efforts within the data models we’re building and training to be inclusive and aware. We’re committed to doing this in a deliberate way as we expand our customer profile across industries, geographies, and health coverage types, including Medicare Advantage and Medicaid.

We’re excited that this is a priority for our leadership team, with commitments from our CEO Dr. Vindell Washington and our Chief Science and Innovation Officer Dr. Erich Huang. We’re looking to continue to forge partnerships with organizations who can guide our progress and share in our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Contact us if that’s you or your org!

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