About Us
The Equity in Health Systems (EqHS) Lab was established in September 2021 by Dr. Jerry Maniate. Drawing together leaders, influencers, learners, and patient partners from diverse backgrounds has facilitated the creation of a unique community and social network that is based on shared principles and approach
What Drives Us
The Challenge
Equity, accessibility, and belonging are critical to better care, experience, and outcomes in the health system.
Historically, these initiatives and efforts have often appeared to be symbolic or performative and not transformative, with minimal if any positive impact on the health system for those populations seeking care or working within it who face structural inequities or barriers.
Health system leaders, funders and users have begun to recognize that we must collectively grapple with, and address the numerous real world problems that impede the care and outcomes people need.
The Opportunity
We must approach work exploring and addressing challenges in equity, accessibility, and belonging research in healthcare in a new way that is:
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driven by theory
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applied to the real-life context
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transformational to our health system
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socially impactful
The right approach and the right team will provide different perspectives on problems, create comprehensive research questions, develop consensus clinical definitions and guidelines, and drive towards comprehensive health services.
What is important to us
Community
We are a community of interdisciplinary researchers, health professionals, learners, patient partners, and community partners who are exploring novel strategies to improve the experience that occurs in our health system for individuals from structurally excluded and marginalized populations.
Focus
We will be striving to explore the key concepts of equity, accessibility, and belonging within our communities and health systems using social determinants of health and social accountability lens. We will be partnering with organizations, institutions and community groups to identify and evaluate strategies that move us forward.
Relationships
We focus on building relationships and trust in order to co-create strategies that are meaningful, sustainable and have a positive social impact on our community.
Objectives
Our Lab is a community that:
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Seeks to understand the inequities that impact the health of our community;
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Co-creates and evaluates high impact interventions to address health disparities within communities;
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Fosters collaboration among researchers, clinicians, learners and community members, and;
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Educates, mentors, and supports early-career investigators (health professions students, resident physicians, graduate students, early-stage faculty, and others) to produce actionable and sustainable research.
