Errol Pierre

I think just remembering the lessons from COVID that we learned, you have to have a health equity lens at the world to make sure the most vulnerable populations get the same access as everybody else.

We were already value-based.

We were already serving the most vulnerable populations.

We already had health equity in our DNA close to 30 years, just from the inception of when Health First was created.

In 2020, our CEO very quickly ensured that health equity was going to be a corporate goal for the organization.

So when we developed our top priorities corporately, at the top of the list was health equity right next to compliance.

So while some companies are hiring chief health equity officers, our approach has been more collaborative, meaning we look through a lens of health equity in everything we do.

And essentially, everyone is an ambassador for health equity.

Yeah.

I think the goal now is to move from crisis to recovery.

The questions we're asking ourselves is, what does health equity look like in a post-COVID world?

We still have massive shortages with physicians and nurses.

Even within those shortages are even bigger needs when it comes to

ethnic concordance and by ethnic concordance i'm referring to when patients see similarities in their physicians and we know research shows that if patients see similarities in their physicians that can lead to improved communication higher adherence rates better healthcare outcomes

And so, we're thinking through what advances can we actually make to make health equity more sustainable.

New York City and the Department of Health, they proclaimed racism to be a public health crisis.

And so, I think we're asking ourselves, what does our industry look like after that proclamation?

What structural changes can we make to unravel the decades and decades of rules that allowed health inequity to exist?

And we're literally trying to figure out a system that promotes systemic equity.

So I think that's the future, is policies, program, procedures, health plans, providers, pharmaceutical companies, all literally looking through a lens of health equity, saying the most vulnerable populations have to get the care that they need.