Glossary of Health Equity Terms
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This glossary refers to the Associated Press (AP) style for the majority of the terms listed below. For terms not specifically included in the AP Style guide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Boston Public Health Commission, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Washington School of Public Health informed those definitions. This list will be reviewed regularly to reflect changes in culture and society, and this list will be updated as language and standards evolve.
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Definition
Community is defined as people and organizations who are impacted by the programming and solutions. These are as people and organizations outside hospital walls but within a hospital's service area/town/city/county. Examples include patients, community groups, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, and local public health departments.
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Definition
Cultural competence is the integration and transformation of knowledge about individuals and groups of people into specific standards, policies, practices, and attitudes used in appropriate cultural settings to increase the quality of services with the intention of producing better outcomes.
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Definition
Cultural humility is a lifelong process of self-reflection and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another’s culture, but one starts with an examination of her/his own beliefs and cultural identities.
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Definition
Diversity describes the myriad ways in which people differ, including the psychological, physical, and social differences that occur among all individuals, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, religion, economic class, education, age, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, mental and physical ability, and learning styles. Diversity is all-inclusive and supportive of the proposition that everyone and every group should be valued. It is about understanding these differences and moving beyond tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of our differences.
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Definition
Equality is the condition under which every individual is treated in the same way, and is granted the same rights and responsibilities, regardless of their individual differences.
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Definition
Equitable procurement is the purchase of goods and services with a new or more diverse set of vendors, with a priority on increasing participation from underrepresented groups.
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Definition
Equity ensures that individuals are provided the resources and support they need to have access to the same opportunities as the general population. While equity represents impartiality, the distribution is made in such a way to even opportunities for all the people, i.e. leveling the playing field. Conversely, equality indicates uniformity, where everything is evenly distributed among people.
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Definition
Equity influencer is someone inside a hospital or health system who formally or informally advances the organization’s equity agenda.
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Definition
Health care ecosystem consists of providers, payers, consumers, regulators; essentially all that is required to deliver health care to individuals.
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Definition
Health disparities are differences in outcomes or disease burden among disparate groups.
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Definition
Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity achieve optimal health. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care.
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Definition
Health inequities are differences in health outcomes that are avoidable, unfair and unjust, and make some population groups more likely to have poorer health outcomes than others.
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Definition
Implicit biases are attitudes and stereotypes that people unknowingly hold, also known as unconscious or hidden biases. Many studies have indicated that implicit biases affect individuals’ attitudes and actions, thus creating real-world implications.
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Definition
Inclusion/inclusiveness is a dynamic state of operating in which diversity is leveraged to create a fair, healthy, and high-performing organization or community. An inclusive environment ensures equitable access to resources and opportunities for all. It also enables individuals and groups to feel safe, respected, engaged, motivated, and valued for who they are and for their contributions toward organizational and societal goals.
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Definition
Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for whites and oppression and disadvantage for people from groups classified as people of color.
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Definition
Race is a social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly skin color), cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification, and the social, economic and political needs of a society at a given period of time. There are no distinctive genetic characteristics that truly distinguish between groups of people. The social construct of race presumes human worth and social status to establish and maintain privilege and power. Race is independent of ethnicity.
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Definition
Racism is a doctrine asserting racial differences in character, intelligence, etc., and the superiority of one race over another, or racial discrimination or feelings of hatred or bigotry toward people of another race. The terms institutional racism, structural racism, and systemic racism, refer to social, political and institutional systems and cultures that contribute to racial inequality in areas such as employment, health care, housing, the criminal justice system and education.
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Definition
Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the underlying social and economic conditions in the community that influence people’s ability to be healthy.
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Definition
Social needs are individuals’ non-medical, social or economic circumstances that hinder their ability to stay health and/or recover from illness.
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Definition
Societal factors are the multifaceted conditions, circumstances and causes that influence the health of patients, including social determinants of health (SDOH), social needs and systemic causes are the fundamental causes of the social inequities that lead to poor health. These include, for example, racism, sexism, generational poverty or redlining.
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Definition
Structural barriers are obstacles that collectively affect a group disproportionately and perpetuate or maintain stark disparities in outcomes. Structural barriers can be policies, practices, and other norms that favor an advantaged group while systematically disadvantaging a marginalized group.
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Definition
Structural racism is the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics — historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal — that routinely advantage white people while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. It is a complex system by which racism is developed, maintained and protected.
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Definition
Systemic causes are the fundamental causes of the social inequities that lead to poor health. These include, for example, racism, sexism, generational poverty or redlining.
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Definition
Systemic racism refers to social structures that are embedded in public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations and other norms that reinforce and perpetuate racial group inequity.
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Definition
Value is derived from measuring health outcomes against the cost of delivering the outcomes.