Health Equity

For patients who rely on California’s public health care systems, health equity means having a fair opportunity to be healthy, including access to high-quality, responsive care.

Many of the 3.4 million patients served by SNI’s member systems come from historically disadvantaged and under-resourced communities. 

  • Nearly 60% of patients identify as people of color and 37% of patients identify as Hispanic or Latino
  • Many patients experience financial hardship, including food insecurity, housing instability, or homelessness
  • Public health care systems deliver 36% of all Medi-Cal and uninsured hospital care statewide

Because our member systems exist to care for patients who face the greatest barriers to health, equity has long been central to their mission and work. Advancing that mission means identifying and addressing systemic inequities in care related to race, ethnicity, immigration status, language, insurance coverage, ability to pay, identity, or other circumstance.

Photo Credit: CoP participants from UC San Diego Health

How SNI helps member systems advance health equity

SNI helps member systems put equity goals into measurable, practical action so they can reduce health disparities and better meet the needs of their diverse patients and communities. Our work focuses on:

Measuring health disparities

SNI works with systems to build and use the data capabilities needed to identify health disparities, track progress, and guide improvement efforts toward more equitable care. Our hands-on support is especially critical as systems collect, report, stratify, and use data for statewide programs. Increasingly, these programs center equity by tying funding to improved outcomes for patients who have historically faced barriers to care.

Embedding equity in practice

SNI helps systems build the organizational capacity, strategies, and relationships needed to act on disparities and embed equity into care delivery, operations, and decision-making. Guided by our equity expertise, SNI’s Equity Community of Practice is the core vehicle for this work, creating a shared learning space for systems to move complex equity work forward together.

“When we entered SNI’s Equity Community of Practice, we were thinking, ‘Well, this is a health equity type of project.’ This is actually not a project. This is the center of everything, and everything else is a project. We exist here because we’re a safety net system. If we’re not doing health equity work, then we’re not doing the work we’re set to do.”

About SNI’s Equity Community of Practice

Launched in 2022 in collaboration with the National Equity Project, SNI’s Equity Community of Practice (CoP) has engaged over 150 leaders from 13 member systems through in-person and virtual learning sessions, skill-building workshops, affinity groups, peer consultancies, and coaching. Today, participating systems continue to:

Center patients, communities, and staff

Using co-design and shared decision-making, systems learn new ways to redesign care with patients, community members, and staff and make lived experience a stronger part of improving culturally responsive care.

Test and embed equity strategies

Systems design, test, and refine approaches to address their specific equity challenges, as well as equity-focused quality improvement work. Peer support and expert coaching help them turn ideas into operational practices, structural change, and more equitable care for patients.

Learn from peers and spread what works

Systems build trusted relationships with peers, exchange ideas and advice, and adapt promising practices in their own organizations. SNI supports this spread by developing and curating tools, frameworks, articles, and lessons learned from the CoP’s work.

Featured equity stories from the CoP

Briefs from the CoP

A closer look at three systems’ equity journeys:

Short videos featuring:

  • Beckett Maravelias, UCLA Health
  • Minako Watabe, Ventura County Medical Center
  • Sabreen White, Riverside University Health System
  • Shivon Carreño, UC San Diego Health 
  • Yousef Turshani, San Mateo Medical Center
  • Erik Fermin, a consultant with SNI’s partner NEP

Articles

Reports and evaluations