Natividad physicians strive to bring health equity to the community.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman(e).”

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that 50 years ago at the second convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. America was in the midst of tremendous social change that left an indelible imprint on the course of American history, yet the same can’t be said about our national health care realm.

At the turn of the 20th century, the National Academy of Sciences, via a series of reports, demonstrated key differences in the health experience of Americans based on many factors, chief among them socio-economic status. These have come to be known collectively as “health disparities.”

The most commonly referenced health disparity is the difference of five years in life expectancy between white and black Americans. Medical professionals hoping to improve on such outcomes now frame the discussion based on the concept of “health equity.”

A key question about these barriers: How committed are we, in the medical profession, to repairing inequality?

As early as 2002, professors at one of our home universities, University of California San Francisco, described health equity as “the absence of health disparities between groups with different levels of underlying social advantage/disadvantage – wealth, power or prestige.” This June, several Natividad Family Medicine faculty will present at a UCSF colloquium on health equity. We will present on several health equity projects at work in our Salinas community, from standardizing clinic care for patients with diabetes to incorporating psycho-behavioral outreach efforts into “Sports Physical Nights” at local high schools.

Today’s health equity work includes incorporating new adaptive leadership models; heeding feedback to improve provider-patient communication (particularly by overcoming often hidden physician bias); and emphasizing prevention as a means to achieve wellness, while keeping on top of traditional disease-centered models of health care. A current example of these new approaches is the Natividad trauma center’s CHOICE program, where we offer victims wrap-around social, educational and preventive services.

Going forward, we hope to learn and share from this health equity conference new approaches to effectively transfer knowledge to patients and, by outreach, to a community hungry for health education. By increasing awareness about health disparities, we can approach the most impactful level of health equity – advocacy. We understand this form of advocacy will mean aligning our efforts with our other civic leaders working on housing, education and child welfare challenges.

Our learners will be better able to effectively treat the presenting health concerns, and will also have skills to help deal with the many environmental or ecological barriers, encumbrances and injustices that impact health.

DR. JOHN SILVA M.D. is on the faculty of the Natividad Family Medicine Residency Program at Natividad Medical Center.