Defining Inequity
To improve equity in pediatric care, Mi-CHEC is designed to examine and address health inequities. Health inequity as a term is used in different ways by different people. To better understand how Mi-CHEC defines health inequity, please review our following definitions ...
Health inequities:
Differences in clinical treatment or patient/family experiences related to characteristics such as race and ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability status, language, weight status, income gradient, as well as factors such as belief systems and political orientations.
Examples:
Do children in wheelchairs receive the same physical exams as other children?
Do providers assess pain differently in girls versus boys?
Do children with kidney failure from low-income families wait longer for a transplant than those from families with higher incomes?
Health inequities are generally inside the control of healthcare systems or individual providers.
Health inequity as a term is sometimes used interchangeably with health disparity in the wider body of research, but at Mi-CHEC we treat these terms as distinct.
Health disparities:
Differences in outcomes that are associated with one or more social determinant of health.
Examples:
Black infants have a higher risk of mortality than white infants due in large part to systemic racism, and poor housing and nutrition.
Children living near factories experience more respiratory illnesses and poorer lung function than children living outside of those areas due to exposure to damaging particulates.
Children from low-income and/or rural communities are less likely to access specialty care and attend routine appointments because of transportation challenges.
While undeniably important, health disparities are generally outside of the immediate control of healthcare systems or individual providers and thus generally outside of the scope of the work conducted by Mi-CHEC.