As the nation continues to address issues of health equity while confronting the impacts of COVID-19, the need to focus on the central issue of trust is becoming increasingly clear. To be effective, efforts aimed at improving health care delivery and patient outcomes must be grounded in trust. However, the evidence base around building trust, particularly in health and health care, is limited, and we need a better understanding of how to enhance trust among patients, clinicians, and health care organizations.
The ABIM Foundation recently launched the Building Trust initiative to elevate the importance of trust as an essential organizing principle to guide improvements in health care. As part of the initiative, the ABIM Foundation, in collaboration with AcademyHealth, convened researchers, clinicians, patients, and funders in May 2021 to begin outlining key areas for developing an agenda on trust research.
Starting with an overview of the trust research landscape, the meeting highlighted the state of trust research and existing gaps in the literature. Attendees then identified, prioritized, and developed research topics and questions focused on improving trust in health care. In total, 10 research topics and questions were developed, aimed at advancing trust at a variety of levels—organizational, clinician, and patient and community. Building on the themes emerging from the meeting, the ABIM Foundation and AcademyHealth will continue in our joint efforts to lay the groundwork for advancing research on trust.
Read the full report here.