Public Health and Equity

Socioeconomic factors — income, education, language, food insecurity, and many others — can play a large role in health and health care outcomes, especially for vulnerable people and disadvantaged communities. These factors, in fact, often present obstacles to successful health care outcomes and can widen health disparities.

Essential hospitals stand on the front lines of care for patients who experience these disparities. Equitable access to health services is vital to achieving the Triple Aim of better care, lower costs, and improved health for both vulnerable people and the community at large.

America’s Essential Hospitals is committed to helping hospitals combat disparities by promoting policies, programs, and practices that drive hospital and community solutions that improve health outcomes and health care equity for disadvantaged patients. As a founding member of the National Call to Action to Eliminate Health Care Disparities, America’s Essential Hospitals asks all hospital and health system leaders to accelerate progress toward increasing the collection and use of race, ethnicity, language preference, and other sociodemographic data; cultural competency training; and diversity in leadership and governance.

America’s Essential Hospitals makes equitable care a centerpiece of its advocacy and policy agenda and a common thread through its positions on issues that affect essential hospitals and their patients.