Equity and Inclusion Resources

What is equity?

Equity aims to ensure the fair treatment, access, equality of opportunity and advancement for everyone while also attempting to identify and remove the barriers that have prevented some groups from fully participating. Equity promotes justice, fairness and impartiality within the processes, procedures and distribution of resources by systems or institutions. To tackle equity, people need to understand the root causes of outcome disparities in society.

What is inclusion?

Inclusion builds a culture where everyone feels welcome by actively inviting every person or every group to contribute and participate. This inclusive and welcoming environment supports and embraces differences and offers respect to everyone in words and actions. A work environment that's inclusive is supportive, respectful and collaborative and aims to get all employees to participate and contribute. An inclusive work environment endeavors to remove all barriers, discrimination and intolerance.

What is health equity?

Health equity is the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. (CDC, 2024).

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 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. Social determinants of health, 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.

What is unconscious bias?

Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one's tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.

Keep Learning

Take the Harvard Implicit Bias Test

What are microaggressions?

Microaggressions are defined as the everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups.

The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microaggressions might not even be aware of them.

Someone commenting on how well an Asian American speaks English, which presumes the Asian American was not born here, is one example of a microaggression. Presuming that a black person is dangerous or violent is another example. A common experience that black men talk about is being followed around in stores or getting on an elevator and having people move away and grab their purses or their wallets.