Quarterly Topic

Health Equity

Content Type:

  • Quarterly Article

    Digital Health: An Opportunity to Advance Health Equity for People With Disabilities

    September 2025 Pankaj Jain Bhav Jain Rushabh Doshi Urvish Jain Henry Claypool Ariana Aboulafia Bonnielin K. Swenor

    Throughout the last 50 years, the disability rights movement has made significant progress in providing statutory protections for people with disabilities in the United States. More

  • Quarterly Article

    Advancing Equity: Lean Leader Practices and a Path Forward

    August 2025 Dorothy Y. Hung LILLIAN C. LEVY Thomas G. Rundall ELINA REPONEN WILLIAM HUEN Stephen M. Shortell

    Lean management is a sociotechnical approach to quality improvement that aims for consistency in work processes and outcomes. This can be leveraged to reduce inequities by ensuring delivery of high-quality care to meet the needs of patients with diverse backgrounds. Despite recent efforts in the field, there is limited study on how managers implement health equity and workforce diversity goals as strategies to improve patient care. Given the important role of leadership in fostering workplace culture, we examined leader activities and specifically their use of lean management practices to support equity initiatives in health care. More

  • Quarterly Article

    Changing the Story on Health and Racial Equity: Why Public Health Needs an Infrastructure for Building Narrative Power

    August 2025 LORI DORFMAN Sarah E. Gollust MAKANI THEMBA PRITPAL S. TAMBER Anthony Iton

    A growing body of scholarship and practice in public health attests to the importance of addressing differences in power as a fundamental determinant of health inequities. To pursue health equity, public health practitioners must move beyond identifying differences in health outcomes among populations (disparities) to articulating why those differences are unfair or unjust (inequities) and then identifying structures, such as laws, policies, practices, and norms, that advantage some and disadvantage others. More

  • Quarterly Article

    County-Level Immigration Policy and Health Insurance Among Latino Adults and Youth

    August 2025 Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young Danielle M. Crookes Sarina Rodriguez Fabiola Perez-Lua Ninez A. Ponce Alexander N. Ortega

    Federal and state immigration policies influence access to health insurance for Latino populations. Local jurisdictions also have immigration-related policymaking power, but there has been limited study of their influence on health care access. We examined the relationship between county-level immigration policy contexts and health insurance coverage of Latino adults and youth in California using two measures that capture local-level policy decisions and immigration policy–related social inequity. More

  • Quarterly Article

    Health Equity Benefits All Communities (Including White Ones)

    August 2025 Philip M. Alberti

    For more than 2 years, I have started my speaking engagements with a simple message: “Health equity benefits all communities.” Although the message may be straightforward, health equity–focused scientists and advocates like me have done an inadequate and ineffective job making that point clear and believable through stories, data, and messaging. More

  • Quarterly Article

    Turf Wars: How Growth and Competitive Shocks Have Affected the Performance and Stability of Community Health Centers

    July 2025 Justin Markowski

    Context: Community health centers (CHCs) are a critical and growing part of the health care safety net, doubling over the past 15 years to expand access to essential health care services to over 31 million patients in traditionally underserved communities. However, increasingly, CHCs have opened care delivery locations in communities already served by another CHC, potentially creating competitive markets with unknown implications for how this safety net operates. More

  • Quarterly Article

    Incarceration and Psychiatric Emergency Department Visits Among Black Americans

    July 2025 Abhery Das Michael Esposito Tim A. Bruckner Hedwig Lee

    The justice system incarcerates nearly 2.3 million individuals in the United States. Black Americans comprise 40% of those incarcerated despite representing less than 15% of the population. Theoretical work posits that mass incarceration can erode social capital by straining social and family networks as well as inducing carceral churn and coercive mobility within Black communities. Scholars report that greater incarceration may influence population-level health, specifically in communities of color. However, previous work does not address whether incarceration, as well as the racial disparity in incarceration, corresponds with psychiatric help seeking in the Black community. More

  • Laws Governing Substance Use During Pregnancy: Next Steps for Health Equity Research

    Quarterly Article

    Laws Governing Substance Use During Pregnancy: Next Steps for Health Equity Research

    July 2025 Hannah L.F. Cooper Anna L. Mullany Snigdha Peddireddy Simone Wien Melvin "Doug" Livingston Whitney S. Rice Anne L. Dunlop Michael R. Kramer Madison Haiman Lasha S. Clarke Natalie D. Hernandez-Green Angélica Meinhofer

    See all articles in the special issue, Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges Facing the United States: What Can State Policymakers… More

  • Quarterly Article

    No Data, No Problem: Quantifying Latine Individuals Eligible for but Not Enrolled in Medicaid or Affordable Care Act Marketplace-Based Insurance in North Carolina

    July 2025 Gabriela Plasencia Kamaria Kaalund Olurotimi Kukoyi Viviana Martinez-Bianchi Andrea Thoumi

    Populations that identify as Latino/a/e/x or Hispanic (herein referred to as Latine) in the United States continue to face disproportion-ate health… More

  • Quarterly Opinion

    Opioid Settlements, Big Pharma, and Racial Disparities in the Opioid Epidemic

    July 2025 Jerel M. Ezell Sugy Choi

    Despite recent overall decreases in drug overdose deaths, racial disparities are persisting. This, coming against the backdrop of sweeping national opioid settlements, offers a reminder of the enduring potency of systemic racism in the face of what is otherwise a demonstrable public health success. More