Health equity is achieved when every person has the opportunity to “attain their full health potential” and no one is “disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances.” Health inequities are reflected in differences in length of life; quality of life; rates of disease, disability, and death; severity of disease; and access to treatment (CDC, 2022).Watch a short video on Health Equity: |
What are Health Inequalities?Health inequities are systematic differences in the opportunities groups have to achieve optimal health, leading to unfair and avoidable differences in health outcomes (Braveman, 2006; WHO, 2011). Social determinants of health have a substantial impact on the health of many Americans and are a key driver of health inequities. (AAFP, 2019) |
What are the Social Determinants of Health?Social determinants of health (SDoH) are the conditions under which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and include factors such as socioeconomic status, education, employment, social support networks, and neighborhood characteristics. These have a greater impact on population health than factors like biology, behavior, and health care. SDoH, especially poverty, structural racism, and discrimination, are the primary drivers of health inequities. Reducing health inequities is important because they are pervasive; unfair and unjust; individuals affected have little control over the contributing circumstances; affect everyone; and can be avoided with existing policy solutions.
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![]() Watch Veronica Scott-Fulton's TEDx Talk on "How social determinants impact healthcare": |
Healthcare's Role in DisparitiesLooking at race- and ethnicity-related disparities, for example, differences in access to care, receipt of needed medical care, and receipt of life-saving technologies for certain populations “may be the result of system-level factors or may be due to individual physician behavior” according to an NCBI article. The article states that “patient race/ethnicity has been shown to influence physician interpretation of patients’ complaints and, ultimately, clinical decision making.”The literature shows that clinicians have biases toward certain populations that impede their ability to provide effective care. Over time, these biases become institutionalized and harder to eliminate. Given that the perceived quality of healthcare (or lack thereof) can significantly impact health outcomes (e.g., adherence to medical advice, cancer screening recommendations, and medication regiments), many health systems find themselves in a self-perpetuating cycle of health inequities and poor health outcomes. Health systems exacerbate their health inequity problems when they don’t have the required data (e.g., socioeconomic) or healthcare delivery structure to discover and correct disparities. (Healthcatalyst, 2018) |
Ways Health Systems Can Strive For Health Equity:
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