Co-designing community strategies is foundational to creating equitable community health strategies, and integrating the voice and lived experience of communities is a key ingredient to establishing strong partnerships. Elevating health equity requires cross-sector alignment to address societal factors, a shared vision, coordination of data and resources and meaningful engagement of community members.

• Sharing data is essential to identifying existing disparities. Hospitals should partner with one another to synthesize data and figure out a starting point to eliminate health disparities.
• Community members should be involved every step of the way to ensure the solutions will be transformative for them.
• Innovation isn’t a complex idea — rather, it should be simple, attainable and create meaningful change.

Hospitals and health systems work in and with communities to improve health outcomes of their patient populations by addressing medical and social needs. Doing so equitably requires practicing cultural humility and supporting activities that improve culturally appropriate, person-centered care in partnership with communities and public health and social care providers.

• Investing in a diverse talent pool of young scholars is key to developing the pipeline of leaders for future leadership roles in health care.
• Ask questions and listen to the community being served. Don’t make assumptions or decisions on their behalf.
• Humility is a characteristic that hospital leaders should possess when they are involved in conversations about creating equity.

As health systems and community organizations evolve and sustain their approach to health equity, diversity and inclusion, systematic and shared accountability with diverse leadership and governance is vital. It’s critical to establish organizational infrastructure that supports shared accountability, with intentional approaches to represent the populations and communities served.

• Build a solid infrastructure to anchor and integrate health equity work, balancing a clear vision with shared accountability, including from leadership.
• Establish a DEI Council to provide strategic management and direction in the areas of DEI and to offer a safe place for discussing and addressing questions and concerns.
• Understand the processes and root causes of a problem before identifying solutions; then validate with data before implementing a change.

There are many ways to create organizational climates and cultures that promote equitable and inclusive workplaces. Build diverse pipelines for the future by leveraging assets and working in partnership with others to improve employees’ health and well-being.

• Promote an inclusion mindset by allowing new ideas for work that move colleagues to action.
• Address barriers that hinder equity efforts and ensure that everyone is being open-minded, inclusive and open to suggestions that drive transformative change.
• Incorporate a “DEI checklist,” which allows individuals or a team to ask standard questions so that DEI and health equity are integrated into regular work processes in every setting.

Stay on top of emerging topics and considerations, and work solutions into your ongoing workflow.

• Look to the needs of the community to drive change in care and delivery when using a centering pregnancy model.
• Emulate best practices and lessons from communities who have had successful health care outcomes.
• Partner with community organizations such as churches, non-profits or schools to ensure different perspectives and voices are included to advance health equity.