Take Action
Health Care Organizations
1. Commit to Acting for Equity
Commit to taking at least one action from each category described below.
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Activities
1: Start by Joining the Coalition
Commit to taking at least one action from each Rise to Health category.
Review the full list of Healthcare Organization Activities and Resources.
Rise to Health - Health Care Organizations Activities and Resources
2. Get Grounded in History & Your Local Context
Facilitate increasing knowledge among all staff and board members about the history of racism and other forms of oppression (sexism, ableism, classism, ageism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, etc.) at the national, local, and organizational levels. Invest time in understanding your local community, including assets and strengths as well as challenges that community members experience.
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Activities
- Provide staff with educational and professional development opportunities that equip health care professionals to advance racial justice and health equity.
- Examine and identify historical and contemporary examples of inequitable harms in national, local, and organizational policies and practices, including reviewing organizational archives
3. Identify Opportunities for Improvement
Collect and stratify key clinical data, measures, and indicators by relevant sociodemographic factors (e.g., REALD and SOGI) to identify inequities. Gather qualitative data (e.g., individual and community experiences) to understand the full scope and context of inequities.
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Activities
• Stratify key quality, safety, patient experience, and other patient-reported outcome data and indicators by relevant sociodemographic factors (e.g., REaLD and SOGI) to systematically identify harmful variation in health care delivery and outcomes
• Add an equity prompt to all harm-event reporting systems (e.g., patient safety/sentinel events) to increase detection of inequities
4. Make Equity a Strategic Priority
Explicitly embed equity into organizational strategic, financial and resourcing goals and plans. Build and sustain a diverse, inclusive and thriving health care workforce including senior leadership and boards.
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Activities
- For C-suite leaders: know your workforce (equity) data
- Set and align performance incentives to organizational equity goals
5. Take Initiative with Others
Apply the Healing ARC (Acknowledge, Redress, Closure) to address identified inequities. Systematically embed equity into the process, structure, and operations of all hospital activities (e.g., clinical, quality and safety, research).
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Activities
- Use the Healing ARC
- Systematically embed equity into the process, structure, and operations of all organization activities (e.g., clinical, quality and safety, research)
- Invest in accessible and plain-language communications, language interpretation, and translation services
- Address Inequities identified through harm-event reporting using equity-informed high-reliability practices to drive system-level improvements
6. Align, Invest, and Advocate for Thriving Communities
Address root causes of health inequities by leveraging unique organizational assets and strengths to address social and structural drivers of health outcomes. Engage in collective advocacy to address root causes of health inequities. Publicly share equity data and indicators for transparency and mutual accountability.
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Activities
- Align organizational priorities with those of community partners
- Advocate for reforms to address social and structural drivers of health at the national, state, and/or local levels
- Make organization data on senior leadership diversity publicly available and easily accessible