Health Equity is about providing everyone a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. However, not everyone currently has access to what they need for good health.
Serving our communities is at the center of our mission and inspires our work. We engage in unique programming with community-based organizations and continuously evaluate and innovate clinical programs to help members meet their individual and social needs.
We design and implement unique programs and benefits to meet individuals where they are and address their diverse individual and social needs across their lifespan and life experience.
Here are a few examples of how we address diverse needs across the lifespan and life experience:
We provide resources, training, and education to all in our workforce on foundational health equity topics such as implicit bias. We provide additional specialized training for employees who work directly with our members like motivational interviewing skills and poverty simulation experiences. We also sponsor 11 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are networks of employees that form based on shared characteristics or backgrounds. ERG members often share common ties, including their job roles, background, ethnicity, race, gender, etc. ERGs can serve as a forum for community-building; input to improve employee, patient, member, and community experience; and engagement in business opportunities and challenges.
Our commitment and efforts toward improving health equity have been recognized by national organizations. In 2023, we received a top score of 100 on the Human Rights Committee (HRC) Foundation’s 2023 Corporate Equality Index, the US’s foremost benchmarking survey and report on LGBTQIA+ workplace equality policies and practices. From 2018-2024, we have consistently been named among the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. In 2024, we also received the "Excellence in Health Equity Award" from the Business Group on Health for a variety of initiatives and resources, including efforts to advance digital equity among our employees.
We invest in our future workforce and empower our members to achieve economic stability through long-standing partnerships with community organizations like Partner4Work that connect un(der)employed individuals, families, and people with barriers with career pathways, educational supports, and sustainable wages. Our Pathways to Work programming connects individuals who are out of work, underemployed, or who have barriers to work with training and employment opportunities.
Our Freedom House 2.0 program, a community-based training program built on the groundbreaking 1960s Freedom House Ambulance service model, trains UPMC for You Medicaid members to work toward meaningful careers in health care. As of the end of 2023, Freedom House 2.0 graduated 11 classes totaling 109 new community health workers, 54 of whom were hired by UPMC and community-based organizations.
We are part of UPMC’s integrated delivery and finance system (IDFS) that fosters partnerships with the clinicians of our Health Services Division to develop, incubate, evaluate, and scale innovative programming to improve health care access, quality, and affordability for our members.
For example:
