NH Equity Collective (formerly the NH Health & Equity Partnership)
Information about the NH Equity Collective, with the goal of increasing awareness of diversity issues and vulnerable populations
The Office of Health Equity, originally named the Office of Minority Health (OMH), convened the Diversity Task Force (DTF) as an OMH community and networking meeting and as an advisory body to DHHS and OMH. The DTF vision was to increase awareness of diversity issues and vulnerable populations in New Hampshire through collaboration, advocacy and education.
In fall of 2010, the DTF joined the Medical Interpretation Advisory Board (MIAB), the State Plan Advisory Group, and other individuals and organizations concerned with issues of access, quality, cultural competency, and equity for New Hampshire's racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities, as the public-private NH Health & Equity Partnership (NH H&EP). The Partnership’s work has been guided by the Plan to Address Health Disparities and Promote Health Equity in New Hampshire written by the State Plan Advisory Group and released March of 2011. As the only NH plan dedicated to addressing the concerns of racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities, the Plan promotes a more just and equitable future for all people in NH through four strategic priorities areas:
- Access to Health Care
- Addressing Environments Where We Live, Learn, Work and Play to Improve Health
- Awareness and Promotion of Health Equity
- Improving Data Collection and Use to Identify Issues
In 2016, the public-private partnership members identified three strategic priority areas to move forward through a collective impact approach to advance the shared vision, “Everyone in NH Has a Fair Opportunity to Live a Long Healthy Life”:
- Culturally Effective Organizations: Increase organizational cultural effectiveness and improve the capacity of organizations in NH to provide high quality services to all populations (especially racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities) by incorporating the elements of a culturally effective organization.
- Workforce Diversity: Increase a diversified work-force to support economic opportunities for Racial, Ethnic and Linguistic minorities and all populations in NH.
- Race, Ethnicity and Language (REaL) Data: Increase the capacity in NH for the collection of high quality REaL data across all systems at the state and local level to identify disparities and promote utilization of data to inform improvements, policies and procedures.
The all-volunteer independent public-private partnership transitioned to being the NH Equity Collective in 2019 as people’s understanding of equity and related issues deepened and matured.