You have been hearing more about the importance of health equity or making sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to be healthy. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation describes health equity as “removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care.” Addressing the social determinants of health (SDoH) is a primary lever to achieve greater health equity.

Health equity has only recently begun to receive more attention in medical education and practice team member training. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AFP) created a comprehensive on-line resource to fill this gap. It is a one-stop shop for furthering your practice’s understanding and action toward enabling greater health equity for all. Best of all, it is structured for the busy practice and uses short modules with both slide and video resources.

A starting point for practice managers and clinical leaders to get a sense of how they can best use the material in team meetings and training is found in A Guidebook to the Health Equity Curricular Toolkit. Appendix A of the guidebook on pages 49-52 includes some ready-to-use practice tools that can be used in team meetings to enlist a whole-team approach to planning action steps to promote skill-building to confront drivers of persistent and pervasive inequities.

Other ready-to-use tools for practice and team education are integrated in the two-part introductory module at: Making America Healthier for All: What Each of Us Can Do (Part 1) AND Shifting the Paradigm Toward Social Accountability (Part 2). It contains readings, slides, and video links so that regardless of learning styles, there is something for everyone.

If you prefer video clips, here are two treasures from the site that are fifteen minutes or less:

• Facilitating Conversations about Inequity, Oppression, and Privilege
• Application Orientation to the Health Equity Curricular Toolkit of the Equity and Empowerment Lens for Facilitators and Learners

There is a wealth of other information at the AAFP health equity weblink. Give it a look!