November 17, 2022 – A healthy population is the common goal of any community yet achieving this can be a complex task.
We must prevent disease as much as possible, improve the quality of our treatments, and make the systems through which we disseminate these tools much more efficient — all at the same time. Even if we succeed at this, not all of our population will benefit, due to issues with healthcare access. This is where health equity plays a critical role in overall population health.
The CDC defines health equity as “when every person has the opportunity to “attain his or her full health potential” and no one is “disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances.” While this may seem straightforward, the data shows that the US is far from this reality. It is critical for all stakeholders to do their bit to realize health equity; for us, this means tackling the substantial disparity in access to credit. Read the rest of this article here.
