Joy A. Lewis, senior vice president for health equity strategies and executive director of the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) at the American Hospital Association (AHA), is a champion for eliminating health disparities and focusing on actions to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in our field. She recently recorded reflections about her experience advancing DEI as part of an AcademyHealth storytelling video series, and shares more about the AHA’s Health Equity Roadmap with the health services research community below.
Health Equity Roadmap
As Joy mentions in her video, the American Hospital Association, through its Institute for Diversity and Health Equity, launched in March 2022 the Health Equity Roadmap, an innovative framework to help hospitals and health systems take action towards becoming more equitable and inclusive organizations.
To date, around 1,000 hospitals and health systems have started down this path of transformation. This is one-fifth of AHA's membership, and the goal is to continue that momentum onwards so all member hospitals can be engaged with the Roadmap to improve health care outcomes.
Looking Ahead
The AHA has many more DEI activities under way and looks forward to engaging with association members and partners in these efforts:
- Expanding the research agenda of IFDHE by identifying opportunities to conduct or support original research in partnership with research organizations.
- Launching The Health Equity Strategic Learning Collaborative, which will include African American/Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, and Indigenous academics, health equity researchers, and graduate students working with IFDHE to develop a research agenda that benefits a range of hospitals and health systems to drive research into action.
- Spread and scale partnership efforts with the RISE to Health Coalition, a national coalition of health care providing organizations working toward equity and justice in the health care ecosystem.
IFDHE is optimistic that in 2023, we will see a greater number of hospitals and health systems more fully immersed in their equity journey, leveraging the resources and tools and evidence-informed practices to eliminate health disparities and improve health outcomes for ALL.
For more information about these efforts, visit our recent AHA blog post about the work of the AHA’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity.