The Path Toward a DE&I Committee at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health
Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and its many medical centers followed a shared governance structure for creating the DE&I Committee.
Source: Getty Images
By Sara Heath
- It’s been three years since healthcare organizations and industry groups across the country made promises to achieve health equity.
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Made in the wake of a national racial reckoning—driven in part by George Floyd’s murder and the stark racial disparities made evident by COVID-19—these commitments zeroed in on how organizations can weave health equity into their everyday work.
At Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, that meant building out a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. The organization started its change toward stronger health equity focuses at the top with leadership, but then moved throughout the organization to build out a committee that would be multifaceted.
According to Kimberly Williams, DNP, MSN, RN, NE-BC, and the administrative director at Stanford’s Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases Hematology/Oncology, CAR-T, Stem Cell Transplant, and Center for Definitive and Curative Medicine, the committee has a shared governance structure.
Helmed by executive sponsors, including the COO and the chief HR officer, the committee has three key subcommittees: the workforce and workplace committee, the patients and families committee, and the community committee.
“It kind of overlaps at some point on each committee,” Williams said during a recent episode of the Healthcare Strategies podcast. “We kind of come together at the center and are doing some of the same work, but branch off to do our specialized work.”
Williams was tapped to be the co-chair of the patients and families committee.
“I shared that responsibility with our patient experience officer,” she noted. “Our vision statement is to include, and empower our teams, and then recognize that diversity drives our ability to provide equity for all.”
The work of achieving health equity is far from over, as more data continues to reveal different in outcomes and experience based on race and other demographic factors. For organizations to truly be on the path toward equity, they will have to carve out a detailed strategy.
