Defining Health Inequity
To improve health equity for children, Mi-CHIME is designed to examine and address variation in health care for different populations. Health inequity as a term is used in different ways by different people. To better understand how Mi-CHIME defines health inequity, please review our following definitions ...
Health inequities:
Differences in clinical treatment or patient/family experiences related to characteristics such as ability status, language, rurality, weight status, income gradient, race, ethnicity, sex, and more.
Examples:
Do children in wheelchairs receive the same physical exams as other children?
Do providers assess pain differently in girls versus boys?
Do children with kidney failure from low-income families wait longer for a transplant than those from families with higher incomes?
Health inequities are generally inside the control of health-care systems or individual providers. Health inequity as a term is sometimes used interchangeably with health disparity, but at Mi-CHIME we treat these terms as distinct.
Health disparities:
Differences in outcomes that are associated with one or more social determinant of health. While undeniably important, health disparities are generally outside of the immediate control of health-care systems or individual providers and thus generally outside of the scope of the work conducted by Mi-CHIME.
Examples:
Children living near factories experience more respiratory illnesses and poorer lung function than children living outside of those areas due to exposure to damaging particulates.
Children from low-income and/or rural communities are less likely to access specialty care and attend routine appointments because of transportation challenges.
