The Intersection: What’s Your Job Description When You’re a ‘Health Equity Leader’?

“The Intersection” podcast recently interviewed Christina Harris, MD, vice president and chief health equity officer of Cedars-Sinai, about reducing disparities in health and outcomes that affect certain groups of people as a result of racial and ethnic discrimination and social, economic or environmental factors.

Harris told the podcast’s host, Anton Gunn, that working toward greater health equity means providing patient-centered care—honoring and respecting each person through thoughtful connection and engagement.

“Pretty early on in my time here, I wrote a piece just for our internal Cedars-Sinai magazine, where I made the parallel between health equity and just true, at its core, patient-centered care, person-centered care,” she said. “We do it so innately. No one in any C-suite, any hospital, would ever question this idea of giving person-centered care. And then I think with that parallel, they recognize, ‘Oh, this really is our job, because we care about people—everybody—reaching their peak outcome.’”

Harris told Gunn that an ongoing connection with the community is a critical component of health equity because community members provide healthcare institutions with unique perspectives and additional expertise.

“I often refer to this as the ‘community institution ecosystem,’” she said.

Harris told Gunn that she thinks about the people she interacts with in the community and often asks herself, “‘How do I get them at the tables in the hospital where we’re making decisions?’ Because they think differently, they approach things differently in a way that if we could take on one little bit of that, we would be better off.”

Click here to listen to the complete episode from “The Intersection.”