Inequities in health and health care persist despite improved medical treatments and better access to care. Health care organizations have a critical role to play in improving health equity for their patients, communities, and employees. In 2016 the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) published Achieving Health Equity: A Guide for Health Care Organizations, a white paper that presents a five-component framework to guide health systems in their efforts to improve health equity. Subsequently, in 2017, IHI launched the Pursuing Equity initiative to learn alongside eight US health care organizations that used the framework to identify and test specific changes to improve health equity.
This guide describes strategies and lessons learned from the eight health care organizations that have tested changes in the framework’s first component: Make Health Equity a Strategic Priority.
The guide includes:
- Three strategies for making health equity a strategic priority in your health care organization;
- Examples of changes the eight Pursuing Equity organizations tested in each of the three strategies; and
- Common challenges that arise while pursuing equity and strategies for mitigating them.
(author abstract) #P4HEwebinarQ3_2025