Office of Population Health and Equity (OPHE)
What are the objectives of OPHE?
To increase HCA’s impact and action related to addressing health disparities, advancing health equity and population health management
To develop policy measures and practices combating structural and social injustices in health and human services
To learn more about OPHE’s implementation efforts on Equity in OC initiative, please visit https://www.equityinoc.com/
What is Health Equity and Population Health?
Health equity addresses health differences between population groups that are systematic, avoidable, and unfair, and removes these obstacles so everyone has a fair chance to reach their full health potential and are not disadvantaged from attaining it because of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, social class, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation or other socially-determined circumstance.
Population health addresses health outcomes of a group of individuals and can be defined as either the communities in a geographic service area or the patients seen in an organization.
What problems are OPHE addressing?
Short-term: COVID-19 equity metrics
Near-term: Policies and practices that lead to health inequities in the most impacted communities
Long-term: Determinants of health that contribute to existing disparities and inequities in Orange County
What strategies are OPHE employing?
- Making health equity and population health a strategic priority
- Developing internal infrastructure to support health equity and population health work
- Deploying population and community specific actions to address disparities and inequities
- Decreasing discrimination and oppression internally
- Investing resources in communities most impacted
- Partnerships with interdisciplinary cross-sector public and private stakeholders
What are the objectives of OPHE?
- Ensure equity across COVID-19 efforts
- Advance equity internally
- Analyze and utilize data to identify priorities and populations and communities of focus
- Build and sustain organizational capacity
- Advance community drive equity framework