Health equity’s economic impact | Deloitte Insights
2. Design products and services with equity in mind
Equity-centered design is important for developing products and services that address the needs of diverse populations.17 This involves leveraging a broader range of data sets and includes the experiences of people from different backgrounds so that businesses can better understand and meet the needs of their workforce and community. For example, more inclusive data sources could improve an organization’s understanding of food insecurity or suboptimal nutrition among their target audience,18 thereby enabling them to better tailor their products, pricing, access, and messaging to better meet consumers’ needs and, ultimately, improve health equity via healthy food guidance.
Businesses can also help ensure their products and services are designed with equity in mind by addressing biases in underlying data, such as those found in artificial intelligence systems used for housing and mortgage applications.19 By actively identifying and mitigating these biases, employers can transform these risks into market improvements. For example, there are opportunities to collaborate with community lenders to improve the range of financially inclusive products, promoting equitable access to essential resources and fostering healthier communities.
3. Strengthen your organization’s community engagement
Engaging with local communities and collaborating across sectors can improve health equity and outcomes while also scaling business impact. For example, businesses in rural areas face specific community needs, such as gaps in physical and digital access to health resources, which affect the local population’s health outcomes and life spans.20 Tailoring strategies to local needs can improve community and workforce well-being, and support economic output.
Prior research by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions indicates that successful place-based work relies on forming purposeful and lasting community collaborations, and ensuring community voices are heard and respected. Key elements include promoting community ownership and empowerment, using advanced analytics through technology and key performance indicators to measure progress, and adopting equitable governance models.21
4. Collaborate with sectors across the ecosystem
Beyond making an impact on a local level, sectors can collaborate to leverage each other’s strengths and resources for greater scale. Multi-sectoral collaborations provide valuable resources to guide organizations in working within and outside of their sector to improve health equity and enhancing economic value.22
Stakeholders can also leverage regulatory initiatives, such as the White House’s focus on women’s health research, to better facilitate and inform their work for specific populations.23 State-level efforts or resources, like information on community engagement in Virginia or place-based activity in Washington, offer additional opportunities to advance multisector relationships and leverage ecosystem resources to drive both health equity and sustainable growth opportunities.24
In an era in which business growth, talent retention, and productivity are top concerns for many C-suites,25 health equity has emerged as an influential driver of all of the above, according to our research. Whether focusing internally or externally, within health care or across various sectors, advancing health equity is a business imperative and could help foster a more prosperous society.
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