Foundations of Healthcare Excellence: Health Equity
Explore how systems, structures and bias shape health equity and influence care experiences and outcomes. This self-paced learning module introduces the core principals of health equity and provides practical tools, reflection activities and discussion opportunities to help you apply an equity lens in your own organization or care setting.
Estimated time to complete: 1.5–2 hours
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- What you'll get
You’ll learn how to:
Understand cultural safety and why it matters to the quality and safety of care
Recognize opportunities to foster culturally safer care with First Nations, Inuit and Métis patients, families and communities
Reflect on how racism, power imbalances and bias influence care experiences
Support conversations about cultural safety in your organization
- Topics
- Cultural Safety
- Health equity
- Audience
Community organization
Healthcare leader
Point of care provider
About health equity
In Canada and around the world, some people experience poorer health because of barriers built into our systems — including in healthcare — which can worsen inequities. Barriers like racism and other forms of discrimination create avoidable and unfair differences in access to care, poorer healthcare experiences and outcomes. This affects many people, such as First Nations, Inuit and Métis, Black and racialized communities, 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities, lower-income people and families, people with disabilities, newcomers, people across various ages and many other communities facing systemic barriers.
Recognizing these inequities is an important first step toward delivering care that is responsive to the diverse needs and experiences of the people and communities we serve. This module helps learners better understand how inequities influence healthcare experiences, explore the role of self-reflection in advancing health equity and apply HEC's Health Equity Framework to identify practical opportunities for action.
About the Foundations of Healthcare Excellence Learning Series
The Foundations of Healthcare Excellence is a self-paced e-learning series and the recommended starting point for exploring core concepts that underpin healthcare excellence: engagement-capable environments, cultural safety, patient safety, and health equity.
Each module includes practical tools, guided reflection and discussion activities to help leaners apply their learning within their own organization or care setting.
Continue your learning by exploring the other foundations in the learning series. Together, these self-paced modules build a shared understanding of the foundational concepts that support high-quality, safe and equitable care.
What you’ll learn
This self-paced learning module combines practical learning with individual reflection and team discussion to help learners strengthen meaningful engagement in their own care settings.
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Understand the role of self-reflection in promoting safe, high-quality and equitable care.
Recognize how systems of inequity impact health equity through an intersectional lens.
Identify and reflect on one action from HEC’s Health Equity Framework to apply or strengthen in your work.
Why take this module?
None of us created the systems that shape health inequities, but we have all inherited them. Understanding how these systems work is an important step toward changing them.
This module introduces HEC's Health Equity Framework and practical strategies to help individuals and teams recognize systems of inequity, reflect on their own perspectives and identify opportunities to advance health equity in their everyday work.
Whether you are beginning your learning journey or building on existing knowledge, this module provides a shared understanding of health equity and supports reflection, discussion and practical action within your organization or care setting.
How the modules work
While each module can be completed independently, exploring the learning series together helps build a shared understanding that supports reflection, discussion and action within your own care setting or community. If you're completing the module individually, some reflection and discussion activities are designed to be completed with your team or colleagues.
Who should enroll?
This module is intended for individuals and teams who want to better understand health equity and put it into practice in their everyday work, including:
Healthcare and social care providers looking to recognize and respond to the diverse needs and experiences of the people and communities they serve.
Quality and safety professionals seeking to strengthen improvement initiatives by applying an equity lens to planning, decision-making and evaluation.
Health leaders, managers and decision-makers who want to build a shared understanding of health equity across teams and support more equitable policies, practices and organizational culture.
Educators, facilitators and improvement advisors supporting learning, professional development and quality improvement across healthcare settings.
Patient, family and caregiver partners interested in strengthening equitable, person-centred care and contributing to improvement efforts.
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