How to put health equity at the core of your organization

In the United States, as vaccine distribution increased and cautious optimism grows, National Minority Health Month carries particular weight due to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on racial and ethnic minorities. NMHM’s theme this year, #VaccineReady, highlights the need for underserved communities to get vaccinated, even as Black and Hispanic people continue to receive fewer vaccines compared to their shares of COVID-19 cases and deaths and their share of the total population.

The pandemic has worsened and magnified health and healthcare inequities — with Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Hispanic or Latino people dying at greater rates relative to white populations due to the virus (1.9x, 2.4x, and 2.3x, respectively). It has also exposed structural and systemic racism across society as a root cause of these inequities. This devastating suffering and loss demands that all of us working in healthcare, including biopharma, do more to close the gaps in health disparities for racial and ethnic minorities nationwide.

To me, health equity is the attainment of the highest level of health for all people. Above all, advancing health equity is the right thing to do. However, we can be more effective if we place it at the very core of what we do. The following best practices come from organizations with a long history of promoting health equity and can help your company shift health equity from the sidelines to the core of your business objectives, strategy and opportunities to improve the health and wellbeing of more patients and more communities.

Mobilize the power of leadership

Health equity must be set as a strategic priority and business imperative from the top. Simply put, without fully invested leadership, health equity efforts will lack the primacy, direction, resources and accountability needed to drive bold action and meaningful impact. Business leaders can set the tone and pace for the rest of the company to follow, which begins with generating a dialogue on how to center health equity at the core of the organization. Naming health equity in annual company or division objectives, for example, catalyzes broad organizational engagement in scoping opportunity areas, identifying needed and novel capabilities, and setting health equity-specific goals and metrics.

Connect health equity to your mission

Regardless of your business’s healthcare niche, embedding health equity advancement in your goals will serve to expand the scope and scale of your mission. Even if you do not explicitly have “promoting health equity” as a guiding principle, you can find ways to include it in your existing business foundation. For example, a patient-centered mission can expand to become an inclusive patient-centered mission by bringing new intention to reaching the underserved, and possibly unseen, patient. In the biopharma space, centering health equity is a pathway to developing relevant, innovative medicines that reduce disease burdens. There is no segment in the healthcare ecosystem that promoting health equity would not benefit— because promoting health equity, in turn, promotes the inclusion and optimal care of all people.

Keep employees informed on health equity

Healthcare organizations, biopharma companies, and their employees cannot reasonably prioritize health equity without first understanding what it is and how to address it. Speakers, trainings, and other educational resources can help answer core questions such as “What is health equity? Why is it important? What are the root causes and drivers of health disparities? What strategies and solutions exist to mitigate them? How do health and healthcare inequities show up in my company’s strategic therapeutic areas and impact patients?” Sharing information, data, and accounts of diverse patient experiences can help employees gain a comprehensive understanding and vocabulary regarding the underlying principles of health equity. This will generate a collective goal and a sense of personal responsibility.

Embed health equity considerations into standing business tools

?Once informed, your company can begin the work of mobilizing to apply a health equity lens to all aspects of your business and operations. Centering health equity at this stage could mean embedding health equity considerations into core business processes and planning methods, such as clinical trial study design templates or brand planning tools. Measuring progress requires the identification and tracking of health equity specific metrics.

Bring in a health equity expert

There is no better way to demonstrate the importance of promoting health equity in your organization than to create a team within your company dedicated to these efforts. These individuals can use their expertise to develop an enterprise-wide health equity strategy that is rooted in creating trust and authentically engaging with underserved patients and communities. This team can also drive implementation, measurement, continuous improvement, and help engage the organization in health equity coalitions and collaborative efforts.

Working in the healthcare space is a privilege, one that affords us the opportunity to make profound contributions to people’s lives and society. However, with this privilege comes an innate responsibility to work across the healthcare ecosystem to assure fair and just conditions for everyone to attain the best possible health outcomes. None of us can do this alone. We will need to evolve, innovate and work together to create change. But even more, throughout this journey we will need the ongoing guidance of patients and communities to ensure that our efforts are responsive and on track to truly make a difference.