Roadmaps to Health Equity

07/11/23 • 21 min

The road to health equity is long, and many hospitals and healthcare facilities are on different parts of the journey. How do we gauge best practices and strategies for different parties? Several guests join this episode of Health Calls to discuss ongoing efforts to help hospitals across the United States: Kathy Curran, Senior Director of Public Policy for the Catholic Health Association; Joy Lewis, Senior Vice President for Health Equity Strategies for the American Hospital Association, and Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity; and Leon Caldwell, Senior Director of Health Equity Strategies at the American Hospital Association. They discuss the history of the AHA’s efforts and how the two associations have collaborated in the work of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Previous Episode

Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy in a Virtual Age

Much of the health care process happens virtually these days. In the Catholic health ministry, how does spiritual care play into this equation?
In the first episode of Health Calls season four, Jill Fisk, CHA's Director of Mission Services, and Justin Martin, a board-certified chaplain at Mercy St. Louis, join the show to discuss spiritual care in a virtual age. They discuss Mercy COVID Care @ Home, a program which recently won CHA’s Achievement Citation award, as well as the possibility of extending proactive chaplaincy services to different areas of care.

Resources

Mercy COVID Care @ Home: CHA’s 2023 Achievement Citation Video

"Mercy chaplains tap technology to connect with COVID Care @ Home patients" (Catholic Health World article)

Next Episode

Strategies for Talking about the ERDs

The Ethical and Religious Directives have been a popular topic of conversation in health care circles for the past year. But what if we stopped viewing them simply as a list of do's and dont's, but as a living document articulating the mission and identity of Catholic health care?
Betsy Taylor, editor of Health Progress, and Fr. Myles Sheehan, SJ, MD, director of the Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics and the David Lauler chair of Catholic Health Care Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, join the show to discuss the ongoing conversation around the ERDs and how they can fortify the identity of Catholic health care. Fr. Sheehan also speaks directly to several specific parts of the ERDs, giving a comprehensive view of the directives and guiding principles beneath them.