Transforming health care for everyone inspired, Building Bridges by WAFP. This initiative helps you confront health disparities to improve the health of all people. You’ll find education and resources to advocate for health equity, promote workforce diversity, and collaborate with other disciplines and organizations to advance health equity.
Have you had a patient who missed their appointment because they did not have a ride? Or what about a patient who does show up for their 3 month follow up appointment for their uncontrolled diabetes only to find out they were unable to start the new medication you prescribed at the last visit because they could not afford the cost of their medications? I suspect these are familiar scenarios for many of us and examples of how SDOH (Social Determinants/Drivers Of Health) affects many of our patients. While the effects of SDOH on one’s health have been long recognized, it has been in more recent years that tools and policies have been developed to help address these and other health equity issues.
I was fortunate to attend the NCCL Conference in Kansas City last month and attended a lecture called “Understanding Health Equity and Social Determinants of Health in your Clinic and Community.” During this session, the AAFP’s EveryOne Project was highlighted along with examples of specific resources available to you. In addition to Implicit Bias training materials, there are Social Needs screening tools as well as Action Plan development tools and much more available to help you and your practice. I highly encourage all of you to check out the wonderful resources available to you.
Did you know the WAFP also has an Health Equity and Anti- Racism Workgroup that meets virtually every other month? If you have an interest in this area, we welcome you to join our group even if you cannot attend every meeting. We would love to hear your ideas and perspectives on how we can better serve our members and patients! Please email academy@wafp.org if you have any questions or are interested in joining this workgroup!
Amanpreet Sethi, MD
WAFP Board member
I have been practicing Family Medicine for nearly 20 years and have a special interest in population health and value based care. Additionally, I am passionate about health equity and currently involved with the WAFP Health Equity and Anti-Racism Workgroup. I enjoy traveling the world with my wonderful family in my spare time. I am fluent in Hindi, Punjabi, and speak some Spanish as well.
CEOs and C-suite leaders from multinational brands and regional businesses reveal why diversity and inclusion are defining factors in a company’s growth and success at scale. It's more than checking the boxes — together, business leaders are listening, understanding and taking action for real change.
For a deeper dive into corporate diversity and inclusion in action, visit HuffPost.
Presented by PwC and CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™. Produced by RYOT Studio and At Will Media.
This tool can be used by all health care stakeholders to achieve health equity for racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, individuals with limited English proficiency, and rural populations. While the tool is developed for organizations, it can also be valuable to help you in your individual efforts to achieve health equity.
The tool is broken down into five simple steps
The Disparities Impact Statement Tool is one of a variety of quality improvement and interventions tools that are available through the CMS Office of Minority Health. Visit their website for a wealth of information and helpful tools to help you provide quality care for and improve the health of people from all minority populations.
Project Implicit is a non-profit organization and international, collaborative network of researchers investigating implicit social cognition, or thoughts and feelings that are largely outside of conscious awareness and control. Project Implicit is the product of a team of scientists whose research produced new ways of understanding attitudes, stereotypes, and other hidden biases that influence perception, judgment, and action. Our researchers and collaborators translate that academic research into practical applications for addressing diversity, improving decision-making, and increasing the likelihood that practices are aligned with personal and organizational values.
Project Implicit offers a series of Implicit Association Tests (IAT) that are designed to help you discover you own implicit biases by measuring the strength of association between concepts. The purpose of the Project Implicit website is to educate about implicit bias. They give feedback on Implicit Association Test (IAT) performance to raise awareness and encourage self-reflection. When taking an IAT you are asked to quickly sort words into categories that are on the left- and right-hand side of the computer screen by pressing the “e” key if the word belongs to the category on the left and the “i” key if the word belongs to the category on the right. The IAT has five main parts.
You can learn more about and participate in a series of IAT’s on the Project Implicit website.
Conceived by former medical student leaders, Tour for Diversity in Medicine is a grassroots effort to educate, inspire, and cultivate future minority physicians and dentists. Current trends in racial and ethnic health care disparities are widely documented and a major focus of many recent federal and state health policy changes. One frequently discussed solution is the need to increase the number of minority providers.
Healthcare disparities are defined by the Institute of Medicine as “racial or ethnic differences in the quality of healthcare that are not due to access-related factors or clinical needs, preferences, and appropriateness of intervention.” Health care disparities have significant economic consequences for the health care system, and in turn, for the business of medicine.
Implicit bias is the unconscious collection of stereotypes and attitudes that we develop toward certain groups of people, which can affect our patient relationships and care decisions. You can overcome implicit bias by first discovering your blind spots and then actively working to dismiss stereotypes and attitudes that affect your interactions. While individual action is helpful, organizations and institutions must also work to eliminate systemic problems.
