Health equity initiative to serve as resource for EVMS community
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A new EVMS initiative aimed at engaging regional community voices to improve health equity across Hampton Roads is now available to serve as a resource to the school community.
Launched in 2020 as part of EVMS’ Advancing Health Equity and Inclusion for Community and Academic Impact Strategic Plan, The Community Inclusion and Health Equity (CIHE) Initiative works collaboratively with local community members and faculty and staff from across EVMS to ensure community input in institutional activities in the areas of research, education, clinical care and administration.
The group was founded to expand EVMS-wide community engagement efforts; develop and provide training and technical assistance to EVMS faculty, staff and students; and develop and research new methods to engage and serve under-resourced communities in Southeastern Virginia.
Most notably, CIHE includes the 18-member Hampton Roads Community Collaborative (HRCC), recruited from lay community members from across the region. The HRCC will provide feedback and guidance on EVMS activities, particularly those that affect vulnerable or under-resourced communities, with the goal of increasing transparency and building trust.
“We want to make sure that EVMS is a respectful partner to communities that haven’t always had much of a voice at the table and because of that are often at the highest risk for poor health,” says Andrew Plunk, PhD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Director of Outreach and Partnership. “At a very basic level, that means we have to include those voices in our work as an institution. We have to ask normal, everyday folks what they think is important and what their goals are for their own health and then do our very best to incorporate that into what we’re doing. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic it’s that we need to work with communities instead of focusing on doing things to or for them,” he continues.
Earlier this year, HRCC members gathered on the EVMS campus for a roundtable discussion with Alfred Abuhamad, MD, Interim President, Provost and Dean of the School of Medicine (pictured above). During an hour-long dialogue, participants shared concerns about healthcare disparities and outcomes directly with Dr. Abuhamad, who emphasized the importance of this direct feedback to the mission and vision of EVMS. Dr. Abuhamad also outlined some of the school’s ongoing efforts to recruit and retain a diverse group of staff and faculty members who accurately reflect the local community and to leverage regional partnerships to deliver better care to people in the neighborhoods where they live and work.
“The HRCC is the unique vehicle that will provide EVMS with essential community input as we build medical and health professions education, research and patient care that is responsive to the needs of the community and effective in advancing health equity,” Dr. Abuhamad says.
CIHE is composed of a Leadership Committee of senior EVMS leadership to provide oversight and guidance; an Internal Collaborative of faculty and staff tasked with developing processes to ensure EVMS activities address stated community needs and are reflective of institutional goals and values; and an External Advisory Board to ensure that the initiative is part of current national conversations involving health equity.
That External Advisory Board (EAB) includes subject matter experts from outside of EVMS, such as Malika Fair, MD, Senior Director of Equity and Social Accountability for the Association of American Medical Colleges and Associate Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and Sarah Gehlert, PhD, Dean, Chair and Ernest P. Larson Professor of Health, Ethnicity, and Poverty, Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California.
“Academic medical centers like EVMS have been challenged by the time that it takes to incorporate medical research discoveries into routine general practice in health care, which is estimated to be 17 years,” Dr. Gehlert says. “The time lag has in part been attributed to a poor understanding of the clinical enterprise and the health beliefs and practices of communities. Well-balanced EABs bring basic scientists, clinicians and individuals together to bridge the chasm between them and visualize how to translate discoveries into community benefit.”
Find out more about CIHE, including how the group can help advance your EVMS initiative.