Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE)

The Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE), part of the American Hospital Association (AHA), works closely with health services organizations to advance health equity for all and to expand leadership opportunities for ethnic minorities in health management. We have long believed that promoting diversity within health care leadership and tackling health disparities is critical to ensuring the highest quality of care for everyone.

Meritus Health’s commitment to eliminating disparities and inequities within the community it serves has earned the health system national recognition, being awarded with AHA's 2023 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award in the Transforming category.
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) was awarded the American Hospital Association’s Equity of Care Award in the Emerging category. Hospitals and health systems in the Emerging category are recognized for leveraging AHA’s Health Equity Roadmap to dismantle structural barriers in the…
Monument Health Rapid City Hospital’s excellence in using quantitative and qualitative data to address disparities and improve patient health quality resulted in the organization winning AHA’s 2023 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award in the Small/Rural Hospital Excellence category.
The AHA’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity Oct. 24 launched the Equity Transformation Partner program to connect AHA members with practitioners and service providers who can help them advance on their diversity, inclusion and health equity journey in alignment with AHA’s Health Equity…
During the AHA Leadership Summit July 16-18 in Seattle, Meritus Health in Hagerstown, Md., Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., and Rapid City Hospital (Monument Health) in Rapid City, S.D., will receive 2023 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Awards for their outstanding…
In a blog about the third year of Juneteenth’s acknowledgement as a national holiday, Joy A. Lewis, AHA’s senior vice president for health equity strategies and executive director of the AHA Institute for Diversity and Health Equity, discusses the importance of the holiday becoming established as a…
Technology was the topic for the May 17 plenary session discussion between Ivor Horn, M.D., director of health equity and social determinants of health at Google, and Joy A. Lewis, AHA senior vice president for health equity strategies and executive director of IFDHE.
The Health Equity Roadmap, launched in March 2022 by the AHA's Institute for Diversity and Health Equity, has now crossed the 1,000-member mark in engaged participants.
In the first of two new blogs in the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity’s monthly series highlighting Black women health care leaders, Dana Weston Graves, president of Sentara Princess Anne Hospital, discusses the importance of advocacy and being the person she needed in her life when she…
AHA's Institute for Diversity and Health Equity on March 6 held its latest Health Equity Innovation Summit for AHA’s Region 7 (with members from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana). The event brought together C-suite hospital leaders, community members and patient advocates to explore regional…