Speaker Resources

Hospitals, health systems, public health organizations, community service organizations, businesses and community members have long partnered on initiatives to improve community health and ultimately accelerate health equity. Co-designing community strategies is foundational to creating equitable community health strategies, and integrating the voices and lived experiences of communities is a key ingredient to establishing strong partnerships. Moving the needle on health equity requires cross-sector alignment to address societal factors, a shared vision, coordination of data and resources, and meaningful and consistent engagement of community members at all stages.

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.

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. Organizational infrastructure that supports shared accountability can include the presentation of policies and practices that incentivize sustaining equity within the health care system; integrating equity approaches in staff training and onboarding orientation; creating councils; designating equity champions; and including employees, patients and communities when setting strategies, priorities and key performance indicators. Meanwhile, diversifying leadership ranks requires taking intentional approaches to representing the populations and communities served.

There are many ways to create organizational climates and cultures that promote equitable and inclusive workplaces. Policies and practices that articulate the value of including multiple perspectives in the workplace are critical pathways to sustaining equity in health care.

Sessions that fall under this content area highlight programs and initiatives with demonstrated success in the following fields:

• Community-based and/or clinical strategies to improve maternal health and reduce disparities in health outcomes for pregnant people and infants.
• Differential impact of climate and the health system’s role.
• Assuring equitable outcomes for the LGBTQIA+ population, persons with disabilities and older adults.
• Partnerships with faith-based organizations from Black, brown and other communities of color.
• Community-based approaches to violence prevention.