Health Equity

Dr. Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon joins Stan and Clarence to chat about Health Equity.

Dr. Wilcoxon currently serves as the President of Equity Strategies and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at St. Mary's University of Minnesota. Dr. Wilcoxon has built an expansive career with experiences in non-profit consulting, community relations, community engagement, health equity, and disparities. While also receiving numerous accolades and honors along the way.

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Brought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships. More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/

Research

• What is Health Equity?

• Defined as “the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health” (CDC)
• Requires a focus on and understanding of social determinants of health and health disparities 
• Social determinants of health → the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes (i.e. home environment, socioeconomic status, religion, race, ethnicity, age, gender, social policies/structures, political systems, etc.) 
• Health disparities → some groups experience health conditions and diseases more frequently than others 
• Example: in 2018, 87% of all Tuberculosis cases in the United States occurred in racial and ethnic minority groups  
• Example: black Americans accounted for 42% of all new HIV cases in 2018 
• Health equity exists in all areas of health/public health
• Education, housing, food, medicine and healthcare, incarceration, climate change, policy, 

• Health Equity in Healthy People 2030

• Achieving health equity has become a high priority 
• Health literacy → the ability to understand and use health information (personal and organizational health literacy) 
• Emphasis on evidence-based resources and interventions to address public health issues among specific populations and groups 

• Health Equity & COVID-19

• The pandemic highlighted the lack of health equity and existence of health disparities in the United States
• Example: in 2020, black folks made up almost 50% of the Washington DC population and represented 70% of covid-related deaths
• Importance of using health equity as a framework during the pandemic (i.e. vaccine access, distribution of PPE, etc.) 

• How Do We Achieve Health Equity? 

• Needs to be a priority on all levels (individual, community, all levels of government) 
• Importance of evidence-based research and recommendations

• Additional Topics 

• Health equity tourism → the phenomenon that previously uninvolved researchers and/or other individuals are flooding into the health equity field because it’s “buzzy” with little or no experience/training; seen as a threat to the sustainability of the field 
• Healthy equity is currently a unique and individual part of the public health field, but shouldn’t it be embedded or, better yet, implied within public health? 
• Arguments against health equity (typically representative of capitalist, xenophobic, and sexist values)
• Personal health choices are the responsibility of individuals 
• Scarcity of resources → need to balance health rationing and redistribution of resources

Sources

• https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/healthequity/index.html
• https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/socialdeterminants/index.html
• https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/healthdisparities/default.htm
• https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/healthdisparities/africanamericans.html
• https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/health-equity-healthy-people-2030
• https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/health-literacy-healthy-people-2030
• https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/health-equity
• https://www.apha.org/-/media/Files/PDF/topics/equity/COVID_Vaccine_Equity.ashx
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5052675/
• https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2019/01/29/achieving-health-equity