Holistic, Specific & Upstream: Get More from Your Health Equity Programs

Develop more effective SDOH programs and strengthen organizational foundations for equity by applying three traits of effective health equity initiatives: Specific, holistic and upstream. Specific: Improving screens and measures to better identify patients and populations in need and evaluate current programs; Holistic: Targeting systemic roots of bias, such as addressing provider bias, investing in leadership diversity, trusting patients, assessing bias in policies, and rooting out discrimination in clinical research and treatment standards affecting your target population; Upstream: Engaging community health services as knowledge and program partners to address social determinants of health. These are just some of the approaches that will be discussed by our panel of experts. 

Takeaways

• Imbuing equity programs with the qualities of specificity, holism and upstream focus can lead to improvements
• Enterprise efforts to improve health equity, such as addressing provider bias and trusting patients, are important supports for program improvement 
• Be specific in defining and identifying a target population