Diversity, equality, and equity are not the same. Diversity = the inclusion of differences. Equality = leveling the playing field. Equity = People have the same opportunity to achieve best physical, mental, and spiritual health no matter their social circumstances, biology, genetics, or physical environment. Bias impacts them all. Reaching for equity requires moving toward systems designed and built for inclusion and best health outcomes.

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Best health: Getting there together
00:40 I'm obsessed with the puzzle and opportunity of best health. My mission, after all, is: Empowering people as they travel toward best health. Best health includes physical, mental and spiritual health. I define best health as operating at peak performance as often as possible over time.  Another way to look at it is that Best health is living the best life possible given our genetics and biology, social circumstances, and physical environment. While much of these determinants of health are out of our control, we do have some limited control. I can’t change my genetics, but with great difficulty, I could move somewhere else (physical environment). With less difficulty, I could increase my mobility with a handicapped public transportation pass (social circumstances). The other determinants impacting best health we consider more often: medical care and personal behavior. This week my thoughts are about equity and best health. Equity = People have the same opportunity to achieve best physical, mental and spiritual health no matter their social circumstances, biology, genetics, or physical environment.

I had a great conversation this week about equity with Ame Sanders, founder, and president of the State of Inclusion.
Not same: Diversity, equality, and equity
02:18 Speaking with Ame, I found that I was confused by the concepts of diversity, equality, and equity. I have used them interchangeably, but they're not. I appreciate the diversity of people with their varied religious and gender orientation, culture, attitudes, skills, abilities, backgrounds, appearances. I've built teams with an eye to diversity. I firmly believe that there's strength in diversity. I learned about equality which I'll define as leveling the playing field, from the work my civil rights activist parents' did in the Fair Housing movement in the '60s. My parents sold their house in a redlined upper-class white neighborhood to a family of color. I've learned about equity working with people with disabilities and now as a person with my own disabilities. Here, I think, equity means more for those who need it. More for those who need it. A person in a wheelchair needs more to be able to access a bathroom in an airplane. A teen just arriving to a public high school in the US from a Syrian refugee camp needs more to be able to graduate. An 18-year old with multiple chronic illnesses need more to succeed in college. They all need more to achieve the same as everyone else. Another way to think of it is that a stadium is being built. If they build bathrooms with equal numbers of stalls in bathrooms where people sit to pee as urinals where people stand to pee.  That's equality. That all people who sit to pee use the same bathroom is diversity. But people who sit take longer to pee. They need more stalls than urinals.  That's equity.