Reimagining Health Equity through Community Work

Abstract: Community organizations are uniquely positioned to inform new ideas of health equity as well as strategies to address health disparities because of their work with and within communities. However, they are often not included in scholarly discussions of health equity and their insights are not considered in endeavors to expand our understanding of equity and how to achieve it. Drawing on interviews from an oral history project with executive directors of community organizations in Orange County, California, this panel will explore how community organizations conceptualize and practice health equity from the disciplinary perspectives of medical humanities, anthropology, sociology, public health, and biology. By centering community organizations in this discussion, we aim to amplify their voices as a means of reimagining health equity in a way that is more in tune with communities, especially those that are marginalized and experience health disparities. The first panelist, a doctoral candidate, in sociology, will set the stage by outlining how community organizations define health equity as well as how they arrived at these definitions. The second panelist, a pre-nursing student, will highlight the barriers faced by community organizations in advancing health equity. The third and final panelist, a master’s student in public health, will describe how community organizations do health equity work. This panel will be moderated by a professor with training in cultural anthropology and medical humanities.

Keywords: health equity, community organizations, medical humanities