Workstream 4: Inclusive, Equitable Systems

Inclusive, equitable systems as a national expectation, consciously reinforced every time, in every place.

Problem Statement

Through a blend of perspectives, culture, and design, systems that directly and indirectly affect services important to health and health prospects often yield inequities in access and impact. We must actively make fair and thoughtful choices to counteract these unfair situations, or else unequal health outcomes will continue to exist.

Workstream Charge

The Inclusive, Equitable Systems workstream will uplift alignment challenges, opportunities, and impacts related to establishing inclusivity and equity as a national expectation for societal systems that impact health. Workstream members will produce a background paper that will inform Commission deliberations on the associated opportunities, priorities, and implications dependent on correcting the alignment of values, incentives, policies, and actions.

The paper will:

  1. review the status of and trends for inclusivity and equity in societal systems that impact health;
  2. describe how lack of engagement contributes to health and economic competitiveness shortfalls at the local, state, national, and international levels;
  3. identify salient contributors to the problem (exclusive, inequitable systems);
  4. identify accountability disconnects;
  5. estimate the health and economic costs of maintaining the status quo;
  6. estimate the potential health and economic gains from inclusivity and equity as baseline requirements for societal systems that impact health;
  7. identify legal, regulatory, or cultural levers to drive the change from where we are now to a better future state; and
  8. describe promising strategies for marshaling the will to deploy the necessary levers at the right place, at the right time.

Workstream Members

Vickie Mays
Chair | University of California – Los Angeles
Tara Oakman
Chair | The Rippel Foundation
Courtney Aklin
National Institutes of Health
Gillian Barclay
Formerly Colgate-Palmolive
April Callen
Purpose Built Communities
Kim Dobson-Sydnor
Morgan State University
Ruth Faden
Johns Hopkins
Avital Havusha
New York Health Foundation
Nat Kendall-Taylor
FrameWorks Institute
Monica Valdes Lupi
The Kresge Foundation
Tiffany Manuel
TheCaseMade
Shari Miles-Cohen
National Communication Association
Carlota Ocampo
Trinity Washington University
Henrie Treadwell
Morehouse School of Medicine
Cynthia Winston
Howard University