EQUITY
Amplifying Community Power
Co-creating Solutions to Address Systemic Causes of Health Disparities
Every person in King County should have an equitable and just opportunity to live a healthy, thriving life – receiving the care and support they need with respect and without stigma.
We work closely with our partners and communities to address inequities resulting from historical and current practices, harmful power dynamics, structural racism, discrimination, and the impacts of colonization.
Want to learn more, get involved, or support our efforts to address equity and anti-racism in the healthcare delivery system?
Our Approach
HealthierHere is committed to weaving equity and anti-racism into the fabric of our organization – from governance and policies to partnerships and programs. We center the voices of those most impacted by health disparities and inequities in our planning, decision-making, and accountability.
We acknowledge that equity is both a process and a product. See how we put that approach into action:
Ensure shared power in governance and decision making.
Over 50% of our Governing Board's seats are dedicated to community members, Tribes, and community based organizations (CBOs). Our Community and Consumer Voice Committee and Indigenous Nations Committee are formal committees of the board and inform HealthierHere's work and board strategy.
We support community members and CBOs to be present at all HealthierHere tables through stipends, capacity support, travel accommodations, childcare, and more.
Elevate priorities of communities through authentic, ongoing engagement.
We build trusting relationships and pathways for participation with community-based organizations and consumers with lived experiences of health disparities. Together, we identify priorities and challenges and co-create solutions.
See our Equity Spotlights below for example of how we implement this approach.
Invest to redistribute resources with a focus on equity, impact, and sustainability.
Whether our funding comes from the Medicaid Transformation Project, philanthropic or private sectors, our equity-driven approach to investing is guided by and designed to maximize impact for the people we serve and places that need it most. We use an equity tool to inform decision-making about who we fund, based on need and other metrics. Partners receive an equity bump in pay-for-progress contracting.
Support organizations to operationalize equity through incentives and capacity building.
We forge partnerships between community, clinical, and tribal organizations, incentivizing and expanding capacity to address equity and anti-racism.
Contracted partners receive training, create roadmaps, and earn funds in part through implementing Equity Action Plans.
Establish mechanisms to define, guide and measure progress.
Through collaborative, transparent processes and policies, we collectively set standards for performance and accountability around equity within our organization and network. We collect and analyze data to drive systemic change and continue to iterate on our approach based on feedback and changing needs. See our:
Equity Spotlights: From Moments to Movements
HealthierHere and our network are collectively working to address equity and racism at the individual, institutional, and systemic levels. Explore key insights and actionable learnings.
Data-Driven and Human-Centered: A Multi-Pronged Approach to Address Health Equity
As a community health center, HealthPoint is actively re-centering around its roots in the civil rights movement, building stronger systems to acknowledge and reduce health disparities that adversely impact its communities. It has developed new governance structures, including a Health Equity Advisory Council and Diversity Equity and Inclusion Workforce Council. It has launched a Health Equity Learning Collaborative, invested in stratified data to bring transparency to disparities in populations for key health outcomes, and supported opportunities for staff and community to discuss how the social construct of race has impacted their work and their health. Learn more about their efforts.
Consumer Voice Listening Project: Developing a Community-Centered Approach to Data and Improving the Healthcare System
To guide HealthierHere’s health system transformation efforts, this project, co-led by the Center for MultiCultural Health, focused on developing a community-centered process for data collection, analysis, and ownership. HealthierHere resourced 34 CBOs to engage and gather insights from 2,860 consumers from over 40 communities in King County about their experiences with the health care system. We partnered with Public Health – Seattle & King County to make the data accessible online and translated the findings into posters in 14 languages. Partners were supported to share these findings with their communities, which generated lessons that continue to inform our work. Read the 2021 final project report.
