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 Healthcare 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 two health care organizations that have tested changes in the framework’s fifth component: Partner with the Community to Improve Health Equity. The case studies presented in this guide provide examples of ways in which health systems might use a collaborative approach to partner with others in the community to improve health equity. The guide includes:
- Historical context and infrastructure of collaborative approaches used by health care organizations to partner with the community to improve health equity;
- Progress achieved to date; and
- Key tactics to build a multistakeholder coalition to improve equity.
(author abstract) #P4HEwebinarQ3_2025