HEAL

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.

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.

The Health Equity Roadmap: A national initiative to improve health care outcomes.

Social determinants of health – where we live, work and play – have tremendous affect on one’s health, and they can affect anyone, regardless of age, race, ethnicity.  Help your organization and community better understand how social determinants impact your patients and neighbors as well as what hospitals are doing to address this important aspect of health, and what resources AHA has to help you further tackle related challenges including food insecurity and lack of transportation.

Understand the role of ICD-10-CM codes in tracking and addressing patients' medical and social needs for personalized care.

"Transportation and the Role of Hospitals" is part of a series of guides and resources released by the AHA on how hospitals and health systems can address the social determinants of health (SDOH).

Hospitals and health systems can implement strategies and programs to improve housing stability, such as neighborhood revitalization, home assessment and repair programs, and care transition programs. This guide recommends a step-by-step pathway for hospitals to consider when developing housing programs. The guide also features five case studies on hospitals and health systems with innovative interventions to reduce housing barriers in their communities.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is defined as a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food with either disrupted eating patterns or reduced food intake. Food insecurity, a determinant of health, affected more than 12.7 percent of U.S. households—that is, 15.8 million households—in 2015.