Why This Is Important to Us

To fulfill our promise to care for every child as we would our own, we know we need a deep respect of different cultures, languages, genders, religions, socioeconomic statuses, and more. Only then can we truly understand the needs of the children we see. And only then will children and their families truly understand the care they’re receiving — and what they need to do after they leave our hospital to help ensure children’s health and well-being.

The Office of Health Equity and Inclusion will help us all become more aware by partnering with our patients and communities — and collecting and providing needed input from families like yours.

Research shows that patients and families of different cultural backgrounds and languages are not only often treated differently (and less effectively) while they’re at our nation’s hospitals, they also often don’t understand their diagnoses, care plans, and discharge instructions as well as they could if they were given the proper care and attention to their specific needs.

This creates situations where patients’ conditions have been compromised — they don’t get better, they get worse, and/or they often end up right back at the same hospitals, simply because they didn’t have the information and guidance they needed to completely understand how to manage their conditions.

If we are to give consistently equal health care and get consistently equal outcomes (results) for everyone, health care systems nationwide need to do
a better job of understanding and communicating with all of our patients and
their families.