A Better Path to Health Equity: LMI’s Dual Approach

Our dual approach works with communities and stakeholders to improve health equity. LMI visits communities to understand the root causes of disparities, gather facts, and prioritize and cocreate solutions (bottom up). Using our policy and operations expertise, we recommend changes to lawmakers, getting buy-in to implement the agreed-on ideas (top down). 

Meaningful improvements require collecting, validating, and analyzing data to craft tailored and actionable recommendations. Unlike common approaches, LMI’s Health Equity campaign emphasizes the uniqueness of each community, population, and region to further uncover and define social determinants of health (SDOHs), update policies, and improve health outcomes. LMI does not assume or generalize. Instead, our dual approach to health equity incorporates community engagement and leaders, SDOHs, heath disparities, and policies.

“Improving community health requires accurate and relevant data to identify population health inequities, develop locally relevant interventions, and track progress toward health equity. Often, community health information is missing or unreliable.”

~ Association of American Medical Colleges (Center for Health Justice)

Community Engagement

Community engagement empowers individuals and communities to actively shape the decisions affecting their well-being. This engagement acknowledges and connects with communities, genuinely listening. Storytelling, often not practiced by policy leaders, is an important part of our data collection process.

Community Leaders

Community leaders’ established trust with the community and deep familiarity with local dynamics positions them for a vital role in improving health outcomes. These leaders hail from various sectors, encompassing different stakeholders. Populations rely on authorities from churches, schools, businesses, and healthcare settings. By actively engaging with these leaders, LMI fosters trust, collaboratively addresses community needs, and crafts actionable roadmaps for implementation.

Social Determinants of Health

Using our relationships with members and leaders, LMI uncovers and defines SDOHs unique to communities, the specific historical context, and the region. We develop regionalized SDOHs for each community or population and transform their stories into data sets for cocreation. Example: Native Americans growing up and living in New York have different SDOHs than if the same Native Americans grew up and lived in Montana. Generalized SDOHs won’t produce better outcomes. 

Health Disparities

By uncovering and defining specific and unique SDOHs, LMI further details the various health disparities in each community. Solutions to address these health disparities differ from one region to another and require collective prioritization and co-development from all stakeholders. 

Policy

Connecting with the community surfaces the right data for policy changes. These insights enable decisionmakers to draft and adopt more encompassing policies while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of current processes for measurable and improved health outcomes. 

By engaging community members and leaders, tailoring SDOHs to the region, understanding the roots of health disparity, and involving all stakeholders, LMI's dual approach to health equity helps improve healthcare for all. Contact us today to learn more and start on your path to health equity.