Health Equity: What It Is AND What It Is NOT and How We can Achieve It Together
Health equity is when all members of society enjoy a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. When health equity is achieved, no one is at a disadvantage from attaining their full health potential. All people getting the right screening at the right time for the best outcome is a strategic priority of the CDC Division of Cancer Prevention and Control in ensuring health equity.
Sometimes, equity is confused or used interchangeably with equality although they are two different concepts. Equality is where everyone has the same opportunities and resources – a “one size fits all” approach. What equality doesn’t take into consideration is that everyone is not starting from the same place as some individuals are impacted by social determinants of health (SDOH) – conditions in the environments where they are born, live, learn, work, play, and worship. These include everything from housing, transportation, and neighborhoods, to racism, discrimination, and violence, to education, job opportunities, and income, to pollution, language and literacy skills, as well as access to nutritious foods and physical activity opportunities. Healthy People 2030 focuses heavily on SDOH.
Equity, unlike equality, acknowledges different populations face different barriers to success and works to limit or eliminate those barriers. The illustration below shows the difference between health equality and health equity.
The best way to achieve equity in this case would be to remove the fence. We must not hold people accountable for the disadvantages they face. Instead, we must focus on the systemic barriers that prevent people from reaching their goals. Therefore, we must treat everyone justly according to their circumstances. This is something that we must all work together to achieve over time. For this cause, the program will look at various population groups over the next five years to determine the needs and challenges of each priority group and focus our efforts on targeted screening activities to those groups impacted the greatest by breast and cervical cancer.
Read More About Health Equity and Disparities