Health equality: Definition, illustrations, and strategies for action
In a drive to ensure everyone has the opportunity to achieve their best health, the focus on health equity has gained significant attention. Health equity goes beyond health equality, offering services tailored to individuals' needs, while health equality offers services to everyone on the same terms.
Racial and ethnic minorities, low-income households, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other traditionally disenfranchised groups often experience barriers to care and health. These barriers can stem from social and environmental factors, such as racial and ethnic discrimination, lack of access to quality education, income and wealth gaps, inadequate housing, and unsafe environments. These factors limit a person's access to good health practices and healthcare, resulting in health disparities that create health inequities.
To promote health equity, it is crucial to identify health disparities in a community, recognise racial and ethnic biases, show respect to all groups, involve all groups in enacting change, and frequently evaluate the effectiveness of policies aimed at health equity.
Effective strategies for promoting health equity in communities involve a multifaceted, culturally competent, and community-engaged approach. This includes community-based health promotion programs, offering services such as health education tailored to cultural and linguistic needs, free or low-cost screenings, and proactive community outreach. Programs must engage community stakeholders to ensure relevance and acceptance, addressing the unique challenges faced by vulnerable populations.
Culturally competent care and education are also essential. This means designing health education and care delivery that respects cultural beliefs, languages, and customs. This involves translation services, staff training on cultural differences, and adherence to national standards such as the CLAS (Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services) guidelines. Culturally competent care improves access, trust, and effectiveness.
Partnerships with community organizations also play a vital role. Collaborating with local organisations helps accurately identify community needs, develop targeted interventions, and leverage resources. Such partnerships increase program reach, cultural relevance, and credibility in marginalised communities.
Addressing social determinants of health is another key strategy. Healthcare systems and hospitals can expand their roles beyond clinical care by incorporating social interventions like housing support, food security programs, and preventive mobile services. These integrated models improve health outcomes while reducing costs and readmissions, especially for populations affected by poverty and unsafe living conditions.
Individualized, whole-person care is also crucial. Providing care that addresses behavioral, social, cultural, and economic factors tailored to each person’s circumstances helps reduce inequities. This is supported by training providers to engage effectively with diverse populations, ensuring access to necessary resources and support systems.
Strategic implementation using data and local context is also vital. Health equity efforts should be hyper-local, adapting proven interventions to the neighbourhood's specific social and cultural environment while leveraging insights from successful models elsewhere. This customised approach ensures initiatives effectively meet unique community needs.
Reducing, challenging, or overcoming these obstacles is necessary for achieving health equity. Health equity training resources include the American Public Health Association, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the Office of Health Equity, state health equity departments, community health departments, universities, community centers, cultural centers, and more.
Achieving health equity requires a combination of political, community, and personal efforts, and individuals often cannot correct all factors affecting their health equity. However, the contributions of individuals who model and promote health equity are invaluable in creating a more equitable healthcare system for all. Adaptive changes from community and healthcare organizations and governments are also necessary to ensure everyone receives individualized care to bring them to the same level of health.
- adopting a multi-faceted approach that considers social determinants of health, such as housing support and food security programs, can help address health disparities and work towards health equity.
- To ensure relevance and acceptance of health equity programs in diverse communities, it's important to collaborate with local community organizations and engage community stakeholders in enacting change.
- Providing individualized, whole-person care that addresses behavioral, social, cultural, and economic factors tailored to each person’s circumstances can reduce health disparities and contribute to health equity.
- In a drive to promote health equity, it's essential to challenge racial and ethnic biases, involve all groups in enacting change, and frequent evaluation of policies to ensure they are effective in reducing health disparities and creating a more equitable health-and-wellness landscape for all.
