Health equity is the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. Achieving this requires focused and ongoing societal efforts to address historical and contemporary injustices; overcome economic, social, and other obstacles to health and healthcare; and eliminate preventable health disparities.

Achieving health equity requires valuing everyone equally with focused and ongoing societal efforts to address avoidable inequalities, historical and contemporary injustices, and the elimination of health and healthcare disparities.

Achieving health equity also requires addressing social determinants of health and health disparities. It involves acknowledging and addressing racism as a threat to public health and the history of unethical practices in public health that lead to inequitable health outcomes. The CDC prioritizes reducing health disparities among populations disproportionately affected by HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, and other related conditions.

Structural racism is the root cause of health inequities. COVID-19 exacerbated the profound injustices underlying the U.S. health system and made them impossible to ignore. We all have a role in disrupting and dismantling systems that produce harm as well as find ways to reimagine and rebuild these systems to ensure justice, compassion, and equitable care. You can do your part by gaining knowledge and learning skills to advance equity across the health system. Our curated education from trusted sources, will help you understand how systems of power, structures (laws/policies), systems and institutional policies and practices impact us all.