Recently, I took a very informative healthcare management course at my university with a segment on health equity, and I was able to gain some key perspectives regarding this topic and its underlying causes. Health inequity is one of the most significant issues facing public health today; therefore, it is important to understand some of the driving forces behind it. Health inequity is very widespread across many conditions, including cancer, heart disease, obesity, mental health, and more. Fundamentally, these disparities result from interactions among several factors such as race, gender, income, etc. However, there are additional levels of factors that influence health inequity, ranging from national and state policies regarding healthcare (for instance, determining Medicare reimbursement for health expenses) to certain community-level issues (such as fresh produce availability or neighborhood crime rates).

Disparities in healthcare can also arise from a failure to account for the fact that different populations have unique sets of experiences and therefore have unique challenges, along with different social and cultural needs. To promote healthcare equity, providers and staff that work in clinical systems must be knowledgeable of the health disparities present in populations and should be culturally informed and competent. They should take into account the diverse set of backgrounds that each and every patient brings with them. Essentially, due to a systemic failure to fully understand and address these complex, multi-dimensional factors that influence healthcare, we as a society have not yet achieved universal health equity; each individual is still unable to reach their maximum health potential due to socially determined circumstances. Better public health outcomes for everyone will remain elusive until these challenges can be addressed holistically.