A Critical Conversation on Health Equity and Racism

The challenge: Create a formal report to memorialize the discussion at a 2020 leadership forum and make its content accessible to academy members for further reflection.

Our solution: In addition to summarizing several panel discussions, we identified key take-aways and placed these first in the document so readers could access the most important information without reading the entire report. We also collected the panelists’ recommendations for future action and sorted these by work environment, so members in clinical, academic, research and policy environments could easily locate relevant action steps.

A Critical Conversation on Health Equity and Racism: Summary Report

Take-Away: Many characteristics of diversity are invisible. 

Diversity is about more than gender, race and ethnicity. “We must respect the different attitudes, beliefs, social determinants, literacy levels, and priorities of the various client populations we serve as health care professionals,” said panel facilitator Hussein Tahan. 

One example was put forth by panelist Margaret Moss, who described why recognizing whether patients are Native American can be especially challenging — and how this knowledge might inform their care. “Since the 1990 census … 78% of American Indians are off reservation, so … you probably have them in your practices,” but you won't know unless you ask them, she said. In order to provide appropriate, culturally competent care, she urged attendees to ask patients, “Is there anything that I need to know about your identity that will impact your care?”