HEAL

Simply put, strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next year or more, how it's going to get there and how it'll know if it got there or not. The focus of a strategic plan is usually on the entire organization.

This toolkit distills the elements of the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (National CLAS Standards) framework and is intended to help guide the efforts of HCOs to evaluate the implementation of the National CLAS Standards across four settings: ambulatory care, behavioral health, hospitals, and public health.

Guidelines Recommended by Cincinnati Expecting Success Race, Ethnicity, & Language (REAL) Data Collection Workgroup.

Twelve principles to examine the power of the relationships between the health sector and communities.

To support hospitals and health systems starting from different points on their journey to strengthen health equity, the AHA’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) is preparing four new guidance and resource toolkits to share evidence-based practices to inform organizational next steps. Look for additional IFDHE toolkits to be released throughout 2021.

Focusing on specific strategies and practices will support diverse recruitment on health care boards.

Inequities in health care are widely noted, yielding poorer quality of care and reduced patient safety, and increased costs. The economic burden of racial health inequalities in the United States is estimated to be $230 billion dollars. Identifying disparities in health care and effectively intervening to mitigate the effect of these gaps is key to attainting a society of healthy communities, where all individuals reach their highest potential for health. Hospital and health systems may utilize a dashboard to provide health care leaders with the necessary information on their journey to advance health equity, diversity and inclusion. A basic level health equity, diversity and inclusion dashboard may include measures to model the American Hospital Association 123forEquity Pledge to include the following: race, ethnicity and language preference data collection, stratification and use, cultural competency training, diversity and inclusion in governance and leadership, and community partnerships.

Help hospital and health care leaders encourage positive health behaviors in patients and communities.

In this webinar, the Center for Community Investment will share the basics about capital investment and how hospitals and health systems can leverage their existing resources for greater impact on health in their communities.

Each fall, the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity partners with various hospital and health systems across the country to provide an 18-20 week paid internship opportunity for academically strong, diverse individuals. This opportunity is aimed at students who have completed their health care oriented graduate degree within the last two years. The Fall Enrichment Program (FEP) offers an immersive on-site experience for those who want to become exceptional hospital administrators and health care leaders.

The Institute's Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) places diverse, graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in health care administration or a related field in 10-week, paid internships within health care organizations.

Diversity, inclusion, cultural humility and health equity are imperative for health care organizations, as the U.S. demographic landscape continues to change and regulatory agencies continue to implement requirements to improve safety and quality, reduce health care disparities and create more affordable care for patients. This certificate program works to train leaders who can build a more robust diversity strategy in their health care community.

The AHA's Physician Alliance has developed resources to help clinicians address social determinants of health within a framework that maximizes their skills while helping organizations systematically approach these challenges.

ACHI and the AHA Workforce Center hosted a webinar on how health systems can develop an inclusive, local hiring pipeline through creating more external community connections and internal career paths.

Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between the social determinants of health and key health outcomes. AHA has worked to promote widespread use of ICD-10-CM codes that enable provider to collect data on the social determinants of health.

This toolkit provides checklists to assess the organization's diversity (inclusing leadership), workforce diversity, and patient care while providing action steps to move toward being a more diverse organization. The toolkit also provides case studies of various hospitals who took initatives toward becoming more diverse and their outcomes.

Board diversity has lagged behind the growth of increasingly diverse communities. This article looks at the advantage of having a diverse board and how to begin having discussions around building one and doing the work to create a diverse board.

This guide provides a framework for hospitals and care systems to stratify patient race, ethnicity and language data and use them to identify and address health care disparities. In the guide you will find sample dashboards and outlined steps.

Racial and socioeconomic inequity persists in health care quality. An exploratory interview with three hospital leaders substantiated by a review of the literature reveals that hospitals are collecting race, ethnicity and primary language data about their patients. Leading hospitals are now moving beyond data collection to analyzing and using the data to develop targeted interventions for improving access to care for underserved populations.