HEAL

AHA members have expressed interest in understanding the degree of alignment between the AHA’s Health Equity Roadmap and CMS's three new quality measures, as well as the alignment among regulatory policies. The crosswalk identifies how each framework aligns with eight overarching key practices that are linked to advancing health equity in hospitals.

National Minority Health Month can be a launchpad to closing the ‘knowing-doing’ gap.

Attendees of the upcoming Accelerating Health Equity Conference, May 10-12 in Cleveland, will have an excellent opportunity to see the Health Equity Roadmap come to life as they join counterparts in other health care and community organizations for hands-on learning that can bolster efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion.

We spoke with Leon D. Caldwell, AHA’s senior director for health equity strategies and innovation and one of the Health Equity Roadmap’s architects, about its importance to hospitals and health systems.

Across health systems, equity, diversity and inclusion may require varying degrees of resources based on a hospital’s leadership, staff resources, geography and demographics. Here are recommendations to engage the hospitals in your system.

Providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services is key to advancing health equity, improving patient safety and quality of care and eliminating health disparities. This literature overview provides a series of resources intended to guide and empower efforts to reach this critical milepost.

Now is the time to evaluate how far we have come in closing gaps in health disparities, assess where health care is on the equity journey and take what we’ve learned to strengthen our organizations and communities through collaborative and innovative work — by investing in our neighborhoods and one another.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of the Health Equity Roadmap — an innovative framework to support hospitals and health systems in their efforts to become more equitable organizations and dismantle structural barriers to health and overall well-being.

Creating infrastructure to maintain accountability to sustain DEI work across departments and service lines.

This glossary refers to the Associated Press (AP) style for a majority of the terms listed below. For terms not specifically included in the AP Style guide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Boston Public Health Commission, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Washington School of Public Health informed those definitions.

AHA’s Institute for Diversity & Health Equity designed the Health Equity Roadmap as a framework to guide hospitals and health care systems to advance equity.

Research and experience show that leading health equity strategies cut across these six major areas within health care organizational structures: Equitable and Inclusive Organizational Policies; Community Collaboration for Solutions; Diverse Representation in Leadership and Governance; Collection and Use of Data to Drive Action; Culturally Appropriate Patient Care; and Systemic and Shared Accountability.

Action Planning is a critical step in collectively advancing equity and dismantling structural barriers (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) in hospitals and health care systems. This Transformation Action Planner is for hospitals at Transforming on the Systematic and Shared Accountability continuum.

Action Planning is a critical step in collectively advancing equity and dismantling structural barriers (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) in hospitals and health care systems. This Transformation Action Planner is for hospitals at Affirming on the Systematic and Shared Accountability continuum.

Action Planning is a critical step in collectively advancing equity and dismantling structural barriers (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) in hospitals and health care systems. This Transformation Action Planner is for hospitals at Immersing on the Systematic and Shared Accountability continuum.

Action Planning is a critical step in collectively advancing equity and dismantling structural barriers (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) in hospitals and health care systems. This Transformation Action Planner is for hospitals at Committing on the Systematic and Shared Accountability continuum.

Action Planning is a critical step in collectively advancing equity and dismantling structural barriers (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) in hospitals and health care systems. This Transformation Action Planner is for hospitals at Exploring on the Systematic and Shared Accountability continuum.

This blog offers guidance on how to get staff to get more involved in and discuss issues related to DEI. The blog focuses on creating employee resource groups, how to encourage and support them, and how to get them involved in internal DEI work.

In this article, diversity, equity and inclusion consultants Stephen Graves and Alex Bethel share insights on how White healthcare professionals can move beyond White fragility and harness their racial privilege to create health equity.

The REPAIR Project is a three-year initiative designed to address Anti-Black Racism in science and medicine. It recognizes that long-standing racial inequities in health, health care institutions and scholarship are a result of systemic race-based violence and racism in society as a whole, and seeks to open conversation and promote efforts to rectify and eliminate these problems.

This article looks at DEI efforts and how they can, if not carefully implemented, look solely like hiring initiatives. ERGs provide space for employees to feel like they belong. The article emphasizes formal organizational support where leaders approve group charters and agree on common themes.

This article outlines the benefits of ERGs while identifying ways for institutions to support involved staff, both internally and publicly, who are primarily volunteers. Black employees who are part of ERGs may feel burnt out and this article focuses on their involvement in ERGs and ways their companies can support them. ERGs develop internal leaders while benefitting the overall growth of the company. Ensuring ERG members are respected and given the time and space to complete this additional work separate from their full time job, have mental health support, and enough funding to allow for them to involve the rest of staff in learning will put less stress on ERG members.

This is a comprehensive example of a Hospital's Action Plan providing recordings, handouts, and the plan itself. An action plan with a focus on DEI results in a an organization dedicated to the goals of fostering a more equitable workplace. A finalized action plan results in goals to move forward in practice, in one case committing to employee-led resource groups.

This article takes a look at accountability and how to begin to establish it at varying levels of an organization.

Health care organizations are on the front lines of addressing health equity, playing key roles in not only access and care delivery, but also as employers and as community members. Discover strategies for organizations to address health equity within their organizations and the communities they serve.