OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION – Project Summary/Abstract Project 2 – Provider-Patient/Caregiver Racial Concordance and Equity in Health Care Systems: Their Influence on Health and Healthcare Outcomes for Populations with ADRD Although more than 16 percent of the US population identifies as Hispanic and 12 percent as Black, less than 6 percent of physicians identify as Hispanic and 5 percent as Black. The proposed project will harness several decades of Medicare data from rural and urban regions to shed light on the role of patient/provider racial concordance in driving health outcomes for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) as well as others. Using novel data sources on physician race and ethnicity, together with quasi-experimental variation in the “match” that occurs in Emergency Department (ED) settings as well as an instrumental variables strategy, we will estimate causal impacts of this concordance on healthcare and health, including ED visits for ambulatory care sensitive conditions, in-patient admissions, readmissions, healthy days in the community, medication adherence, and mortality. In addition, we will examine factors that mediate those outcomes and how the effects may change over time. ADRD patients comprise a large fraction of Medicare beneficiaries who present in EDs and are highly reliant on primary care physicians because of shortages of specialists. Finally, we will compare the impact of racial (non-)concordance in ambulatory care settings, where greater sorting may occur, to emergency department settings, where there is quasi-random assignment of patients to providers. Project 2 anchors the Program Project’s focus on racial disparities in care, complementing the work of other projects that also look at racial disparities in care for ADRD patients and others in other contexts.