Speakers

Partnerships among hospitals and health systems, public health organizations, community service organizations, businesses and community members have long addressed initiatives to improve community health and ultimately accelerate health equity. Co-designing community strategies is an important activity to create equitable interventions with communities and strong partnerships are a key ingredient to integrating community voice. Moving the needle on health equity requires cross-sector alignment to address societal factors and shared strategic vision, coordination of data and resources, and meaningful and consistent engagement of community members at all stages.

Hospitals and health systems also work in and with communities to improve the health outcomes of their patient populations by addressing medical and social needs. To do so equitably requires practicing cultural humility and supporting activities that improve culturally appropriate, person-centered care in partnership with communities, 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 creating councils, designating equity champions, and including employees/patients/communities in strategy and priority setting and establishment of key performance indicators. Meanwhile diversifying leadership ranks requires taking intentional approaches to represent the populations and communities served.

There are many paths to moving toward equitable, inclusive organizations rooted in vibrant communities. These paths can include investing in the assets and potential of communities as well as fostering the worth and dignity of employees who work to advance an organization’s mission, vision and values. As major employers and significant economic engines in their communities, hospitals and health systems can leverage their assets and work in partnership with others to improve employees’ and residents’ health and well-being. Hospitals and health systems are also linking workforce development and other anchor mission strategies to support building diverse pipelines.

Accelerating health equity touches upon myriad topics and corresponding challenges. Communities are working together to address the differential impact of climate change, consider the unique needs of immigrant populations and focus on reducing and preventing acts of violence. Innovative models to develop and test new measures of health and outcomes at the community and population levels (including return on investment) are a key focus for understanding success.