KEY ACTIVITY #23:
Strengthen a Culture of Equity
This activity builds off of Key Activity 4: Use a Systematic Approach to Decrease Inequities Within the Population of Focus to provide strategies and in-depth resources that can help you create or strengthen a culture of equity in your practice. The PHMI Equity Framework and Approach emphasizes 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 health-related social needs.
This can take the form of joining advocacy efforts or participating in benefits created by recent policy reforms, such as connecting patients with Medi-Cal Community Supports for housing or medically tailored meals. See Key Activity 17: Use Social Needs Screening to Inform Patient Treatment Plans for a discussion on social needs.