Health equity is the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.
Achieving health equity requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care valuing everyone equally with focused and ongoing societal efforts to address avoidable inequalities, historical and contemporary injustices, and the elimination of health and healthcare disparities.
Four Key Steps to Achieve Health Equity
- Identify important health disparities. Many disparities in health are rooted in inequities in the opportunities and resources needed to be as healthy as possible. The determinants of health include living and working conditions, education, income, neighborhood characteristics, social inclusion, and medical care. An increase in opportunities to be healthier will benefit everyone but more focus should be placed on groups that have been excluded or marginalized in the past.
- Add health equity benefits to your current and future interventions. Not everyone shares the same health barriers so some benefits while applicable to certain people and populations will not be impactful to others. Once you identify the health equity barriers make sure specific populations and people receive the appropriate benefits e.g., medically tailored meals, transportation, etc.
- Evaluate and monitor efforts using short- and long-term measures; it may take decades or generations to reduce some health disparities. However, focus on addressing health equity barriers that are affecting patients from participating in your interventions.
- Reassess strategies in light of process and outcomes and plan the next steps. Actively engage those most affected by disparities in the identification, design, implementation, and evaluation of promising solutions.
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