LESSONS FROM OUR JOURNEY PURSUING HEALTH EQUITY

In recent years, the Health Foundation team, like many of our philanthropic partners, has had the opportunity to ask ourselves serious, challenging questions about the role we play in advancing equity in the communities we serve. After committing to a new vision of racial and socioeconomic health equity in 2020, we dug in to do the work—and quickly realized that this was a long-term commitment to growth.

Here are just a few of the lessons we’ve learned on this journey—a journey that requires learning and improvement every day.

START FROM WITHIN One of the first questions we asked ourselves is: What role do we play in upholding inequitable systems? What do we have the power to change within our own policies and processes to help community organizations and other partners move toward greater equity? We’re thoughtfully updating our practices within this lens—from first encounter with a grantee to final reporting. This learning is ongoing, but we’re grateful to say we continue to see the impact of these changes in our day-to-day interactions with grantee partners.

LISTEN MORE THAN YOU SPEAK The people at the center of health equity issues need to be at the center of finding solutions. Our programs that are driven by human-centered design concepts have illuminated again and again that when we lift up the voices of the people we serve, we learn more than we ever could on our own.

FRAMING IS EVERYTHING How do we talk about the issues we care about? How can we use our platform to influence real change? We’re committed to using our voice to not only point out problems, but identify the institutional drivers of those problems—and then push for solutions on the same system-level scale.

THIS WORK DOESN’T START OR END WITH PHILANTHROPY Grantmakers cannot solve systemic issues like health inequity alone. In fact, there have been many times historically where philanthropy has served as a short-term “bandage” to prolong those issues. When we start to see ourselves as part of a larger system, with dynamic power structures at play, we can start to undo some of that harm.

The most important lesson we’ve learned? It’s going to take all of us—funders, community organizations, policy makers, health care leaders, trusted messengers, and most important, the people we all serve—building trust and working together to dismantle barriers to good health.