Why This Is Important to Us
Nemours Delaware Valley, Office of Health Equity and Inclusion
Vision: Nemours will establish national leadership in the elimination of pediatric healthcare disparities
Mission: The Office of Health Equity and Inclusion will embrace both internal Nemours and community partnerships to ensure the highest level of health care and respect for all of the pediatric patients, families, and communities that we serve.
The office will serve the following six functions:
- Quality: a) Monitor quality and patient satisfaction by race, ethnicity, language and socioeconomic status to identify health care disparities within the communities that we serve. b) Implement strategies to eliminate these disparities.
- Cultural Competency: a) Provides ongoing cultural competency training for: leadership, administration, physicians, and nursing staff, and other employee staff. b) Monitor cultural competency of the entire organization and patient care units.
- Community Engagement: Engages diverse community groups/businesses through community outreach and participation in community events.
- Workforce Diversity: a) Tracks the diversity of the population we serve b) Partner with Human Resources, and Leadership in the mentoring, recruitment, hiring, and retention of a diverse workforce that reflects the communities we serve.
- Language Proficient and Health Care Literacy: Partner with patient services to evaluate, monitor and ensure the provision of language and health care literacy proficient services (signage, written communication, interpretation, health care navigation).
- National Leadership in Healthcare Equity Research: Engages in best practices, grant writing, and scientific publication to advance health equity at a national level.
Nemours promises to care for every child as if they were our own. Our Office of Health Equity and Inclusion ensures we deliver on this mission and promise by providing the highest level of health care and respect for all pediatric patients, families and communities we serve. Our vision — our mission — is to establish national leadership in the elimination of pediatric healthcare disparities. At Nemours, we acknowledge that we need a deep respect and understanding of different cultures, languages, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities/expressions, religions, abilities, socioeconomic statuses and more to fulfill this mission. Children and their families must truly understand the care that they are receiving — and what they need to do after they leave our hospital — to ensure their ongoing health and well-being.
The Office of Health Equity and Inclusion helps to ensure that we are all more aware — by developing partnerships between Nemours staff, our families and our communities — and collects valuable input from patients and families like you.
Research shows that patients and families of different backgrounds and languages are sometimes not only treated differently — and less effectively — while they are receiving care at some of our nations’ hospitals, it also shows that patients and families often don’t understand their diagnoses, plans of care and discharge instructions as well as they could if they were given individualized care and attention to their specific and unique needs. This creates situations where patients’ conditions are sometimes compromised: patients may not get better, they may get worse, or they may end up right back at the same hospitals — all simply because they didn’t have the information and guidance they needed to completely understand how to manage their conditions.
Because our goal at Nemours — and in this country — is to consistently deliver equal health care and to consistently get equal outcomes for our patients, Nemours and health care systems nationwide need to do a better job of understanding and communicating with all of our patients and their families. To that end, each patient has the right to be granted access to treatment or accommodations that are available or medically necessary. At Nemours, the patient, parent(s) and/or guardian(s) have the right to be granted access to treatment or accommodations that are available or medically necessary regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, culture, language, physical or mental disability, socioeconomic status, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or expression. Nemours will not restrict or deny participation (visitation) on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity/expression or disability. Guidelines are intended to be flexible in order to respond to the diverse and individual needs and preferences of each patient and unanticipated and unique circumstances, as well as to assure the safety of patients, families and staff.
We welcome you and your children — with any and of all of your uniqueness — at Nemours. And we welcome your partnership to achieve optimal healthcare outcomes for all children.
Learn More About the Office of Health Equity and Inclusion (PDF)
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