HEALTH EQUITY 101
Health Equity 101
The term Health Equity is a relatively new concept for a lot of people. Nowadays we often hear a lot of terms related to social or health policies that can seem complicated and unrelated to our personal worlds, but with a little bit of explanation and reframing and we can easily see how these seemingly complicated terms really are quite simple to understand.
My blog today will be a first in a series of blogs on Health Equity. I will be referencing other blogs, websites and sources I find along my journey to more deeply understand the concepts of Health Equity and they can be explored in our community. I will also connect you, the reader, to good work happening right here in our community.
What is Health Inequity/Equity?
Health Inequity
Exists when there are disparities in health that are a result of systemic, avoidable and unjust social and economic policies and practices that create barriers to opportunity.
Health Equity
The absence of differences in health between groups with differential exposure to those social and economic policies and practices that create barriers to opportunity.
What does this mean?
While the drugs we take, what we eat, whether or not we practice a healthy lifestyle, and advances in medical and pharmaceutical technologies are important, there is so much more to what makes us healthy than bad or good habits, bad or good health care, or our genetic makeup. The social and economic conditions, into which we are born, live and work, profoundly affect our well-being and longevity.
As Harvard epidemiologist David Williams says in the PBS series UNNATURAL CAUSES
“Housing policy is health policy. Educational policy is health policy. Anti-violence policy is health policy. Neighborhood improvement policies are health policies. Everything that we can do to improve the quality of life of individuals in out society has an impact on their health and is a health policy.”
Check out more about this great series at: http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/
A great and regular source to follow about health equity is this blog out of Case Western University: http://blog.case.edu/ccrhd/
Right here in River City we are fortunate to have the Center for Health Equity, already getting national recognition for the work they do and a great community partner of Metro United Way:
http://www.louisvilleky.gov/Health/equity/
Please join us here at Metro United Way for the next Health Equity Speakers Series hosted by the Center for Health Equity. This Speaker’s Series is designed to bring attention to and heighten awareness factors that are influencing health inequities. Each series encourages dialogue about health issues and helps the community move toward the research and collaboration needed to address the social factors influencing health inequities and bring about change.
February 24, 2009
5:30PM
Metro United Way
334 E Broadway
Louisville, KY
Please call the Center for Healthy Equity to learn more about the next series at 502-574-6616 or email. RSVPs are requested.
“Social Determinants of Health vs. Social Determinants of Equity”
The speaker will be Camara P. Jones, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. is Research Director on Social Determinants of Health at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Jones received an M.D. degree from Stanford University (1981), completed residencies in General Preventive Medicine (Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health) and Family Medicine (Residency Program in Social Medicine, Montefiore Hospital), and earned a masters degree in public health and a doctoral degree in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, finishing in 1995.
