Health Equity

» What is Health Equity?

According to the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation:

Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires 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.  

The following should be added when the definition is used to guide measurement; without measurement, there is no accountability: For the purposes of measurement, health equity means reducing and ultimately eliminating disparities in health and its determinants that adversely affect excluded or marginalized groups.

Health equity, as seen through the lens of the family with a child with special health care needs, is especially important, and not without additional challenges. How do we ensure that all families have access to the health care they need for their child with special needs, as well as the resources to pay for it?

Family Voices works to ensure that the voices of underserved families are heard in systems-level discussions around creating those fair and just opportunities to be as healthy as possible.

» What is the Difference Between Equity and Equality?