KEY ACTIVITY #18:
Strengthen a Culture of Equity
This activity builds off of your practice's approach to address inequities (see Key Activity 4: Use a Systematic Approach to Address Inequities within the Population of Focus) to provide strategies and in-depth resources that can help practices create or strengthen a culture of equity in your practice. The PHMI Equity Framework and Approach emphases that achieving long-term and sustainable improvements to health and racial equity for patients and the broader ecosystem requires a transformational shift at the organizational level. The following strategies can help practices strengthen a culture of equity:
- Demonstrate senior leadership ownership for and commitment to improving health equity.
- Understand and address internalized, personally mediated and institutionalized racism.
- This should include ongoing learning and development activities on the full range of health equity topics (e.g., anti-bias, structural racism, race-based algorithms).
- Build organizational capacity to support efforts to improve health equity.
- Establish practices and policies to promote workforce diversity and provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care.
- Support policy efforts to eliminate inequities driven by social drivers of health.
- This can take the form of joining advocacy efforts or participating in benefits created by recent policy reforms, such as connecting patients with CalAIM Community Supports or Enhanced Care Management. See Key Activity 14: Use Social Needs Screening to Inform Patient Treatment Plans for a discussion on social needs