Fighting for Optimal Health Outcomes

February 21, 2025 | VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1

Health inequities are not abstract issues—they are real, deeply rooted, and persistently harmful to the communities they affect.

Despite increasing awareness, recent policies restricting inclusionary efforts and access to health care threaten to further widen the disparities that many clinicians have dedicated their careers to addressing.

Last spring, CHEST formed a Health Equity Task Force to surface a more comprehensive and concrete understanding of the areas in which documented and experienced health disparities exist across the landscape of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. The advocates who comprise this task force make it their mission to advance health equity every day.

“Recent executive orders restricting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts directly undermine clinicians' ability to provide the best possible care for their patients. By silencing discussions on racism in medicine, health disparities, health inequities, and the social determinants of health, these policies deprive clinicians of the tools necessary to address the real-world challenges their patients face. This is not just a political issue—it is a direct attack on medical practice that exacerbates health inequities and disproportionately harms communities of color. Clinicians must be empowered to treat the whole patient, which includes understanding the systemic barriers to health. We cannot afford to stand by as policies like these weaken our health care system and compromise patient outcomes. Now is the time to speak out and demand a system that prioritizes truth, equity, and the health of all people.”

“Now that I at least have some understanding of the magnitude of the problem [of health inequities], I feel compelled. Like there is no other choice. I can't ignore it. So, if I didn't do anything, I'd be complicit in perpetuating the problem.

In this political climate, with the anti-DEIB [diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging] sentiment that is expressing itself in policy change, it is imperative that clinicians continue to advocate and work on this subject specifically so that we have a voice in the matter as things evolve and we can help shape the landscape.

I shouldn't be seeing all the patients that I see in the ICU. They should get preventative care and maintenance care that keep them from coming to the ICU. It shouldn't be where they have to go to take care of chronic pulmonary or other organ system diseases and illnesses…Everyone has the right to good health outcomes.”

“I'm a proud member of the Blackfeet Nation, and I grew up witnessing health care and how it's different depending on where you access it. Are you on a reservation? Are you in an urban setting? Your identity kind of results in a difference in health care. So, it's always been really near and dear to my heart, and I want to make a way for all of us to have all of the best possible health care outcomes.

I commonly get asked, what is health equity? Really, what we try to practice in current medicine is not equity, it's equality, which means everybody receives the same intervention— when, in reality, that is not what is needed. So, equity is that extra step that certain populations or people need to achieve a good outcome in health care. Fundamentally, we need to make everybody understand that sometimes a population might need more help than others.

As a clinical researcher, one thing that has always felt really strange to me is we don't involve participants as equal partners. And it feels like this shouldn't be an innovation…The voices that we really need to include are the participants of the people who we serve.”

“I cannot stand injustice, and medicine is something that is full of injustices.

If I had a magic bullet to address health equity, I would ask that physicians be able to have the knowledge and experience to truly see what their patient is bringing to the table.

How do we maintain our passion [for health equity]? It’s because…there is a coalition of the willing. There are people who are coming together…rolling up their sleeves…[and] people who are saying, ‘This still needs to be done.’ And so, being in this fight, but not being alone, is what really maintains one's resolve and passion. But, at the end of the day, it still comes to the patients…That's where the true passion lies. And that's where we know we need to keep improving and doing better.”