Shifting the Paradigm to Advance Health and Build Community

To equip marginalized populations with opportunities for optimal health outcomes

EHAN’S VISION

Equity in Health Advisor Network

Our Mission

  • At EHAN, data drives our mission to create opportunities for improving health outcomes. From 1999-2020, "The Black population had 1.63 million excess deaths, representing more than 80 million years of potential life lost over the study period."  Transformative change, effective evaluation, and accountability are necessary for public health, clinical research, healthcare delivery, physical environment, and social and economic factors to reduce health disparities, including those driven by unjust systems. [JAMA. 2023;329(19):1662-1670. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.7022]

  • EHAN collaborates to develop health initiatives through a social justice lens to address the root causes of health disparities. Through awareness and education, we prioritize "change thinking" (a paradigm shift), recognizing the intersectionality of the environment as global warming intensifies, structural systems in education and health care, and disease prevention, as well as an evaluation continuum to mitigate further gaps in optimal outcomes.

  • At EHAN, our commitment is to amalgamate health and education, recognizing the practical impact of this combination on enhancing quality of life. We believe addressing the imbalances in health and education opportunities is crucial to achieving optimal outcomes. Structural deficits are sustained in silos and perpetuated by well-intentioned individuals and harmful government policies. A multidisciplinary approach that drives lifting people where they live, play, worship, and work that prioritizes health and education will strengthen and motivate families and communities to actualize well-being.

  • Society influences the health and well-being of populations. Acknowledging the determinants (where people live, work, and play) and the distribution of health, disease, and education are crucial to creating opportunities to normalize optimal health and education outcomes in all communities. This work intentionally targets segments of the community encountering chasms initiated by structural biases.

Empowerment through health

EQUITY IN HEALTH ADVISORS NETWORK, INC. (EHAN) is uniquely positioned to be led by diverse health professionals, amalgamating lived experiences with agency. We bring a wealth of scholarship, credentials, and experience across health and wellness, including medicine, mental health, public health, health literacy, diversity training, and biomedical research. We work collaboratively to advance health equity, drawing inspiration from our collective lived experiences, scholarship, and commitment to shifting the paradigm of poor health outcomes to actualize opportunities for optimal health through a population health lens. 

At EHAN, we work to ensure everyone can enjoy optimal health with comparable access to best practices in healthcare service delivery. What is optimal health? According to the US Health and Human Services: 

“Optimal health is a dynamic balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health...Lifestyle change can be facilitated through a combination of learning experiences that enhance awareness, increase motivation, and build skills and, most importantly, through the creation of opportunities that open access to environments that make positive health practices the easiest choice.”1

  • We acknowledge that historical disparities in health outcomes persist around socioeconomic status (SES), social determinants of health (SDOH), and race.

  • We study causality and identify root causes for the best solutions, particularly as we realize disproportionate, elevated mortality and morbidity rates exist for Black/African Americans who have high educational attainment and income on par with their white peers.

  • We recognize that social harms intersect with the environment, resulting in risks to education, food security, and housing insecurity. Collectively, the determinants may limit access to equitable treatment, disrupt continuity of care, influence clinician biases, and precipitate disparities in diagnostic tools and labs.

  • We also recognize an intergenerational component, i.e., weatherization or allostatic load, that contributes to health outcomes related to hazards that require adjustment, as evidenced by cases in which social determinants of health are not a contributory factor to poor outcomes.

  • Our unwavering commitment is to explore and address the root causes of inequities and work towards a more equitable healthcare system. 

Health disparities exacerbate educational inequities, furthering the broken social contract to believe there is equality for all. EHAN’s purpose is to shift the paradigm of poor health outcomes when addressing disparate treatment issues. EHAN will improve health literacy to motivate behavioral change and address discriminatory practices that undermine diversity, equity, and inclusion in healthcare delivery and academic settings.